Arba'un 29 — tell me of a deed that admits me to Paradise

الأربعون 29 — أخبرني بعمل يدخلني الجنة

The hadith of Mu'adh ibn Jabal that he asked the Messenger of God ﷺ for a deed admitting him to Paradise and distancing him from the Fire, and was answered 'you have asked about a tremendous matter, yet it is easy for one whom God makes it easy: worship God associating nothing with Him, establish the prayer, give the zakat, fast Ramadan and perform the hajj', then 'shall I point you to the gates of good? Fasting is a shield, charity extinguishes sin as water extinguishes fire, and a man's prayer in the depth of night' — reciting from Surat al-Sajda (16–17) — then 'shall I tell you of the head of the matter, its pillar and the peak of its hump? Its head is Islam, its pillar the prayer, and the peak of its hump jihad', and finally 'shall I tell you of what controls all of that?' — taking hold of his own tongue — 'restrain this', answering Mu'adh's 'are we really taken to account for what we say?' with 'may your mother be bereft of you — are people thrown onto their faces, or their nostrils, in the Fire for anything but the harvest of their tongues?'; the twenty-ninth of al-Nawawi's Forty and of Ibn Rajab's commentary, transmitted by Ahmad, al-Tirmidhi (2616, graded hasan sahih), al-Nasa'i in al-Kubra and Ibn Majah (3973) through Mu'ammar from Asim ibn Abi al-Nujud from Abu Wa'il from Mu'adh — a grading Ibn Rajab questions on two grounds: first, Abu Wa'il's hearing from Mu'adh is unproven though their lifetimes overlapped, Mu'adh being in Syria and Abu Wa'il in Kufa, the imams — Ahmad among them — having always argued from precisely such geography against hearing, and Abu Hatim al-Razi having reasoned the same way against Abu Wa'il's hearing from Abu al-Darda', while Abu Zur'a al-Dimashqi reports people who suspended or denied Abu Wa'il's hearing even from Umar, making Mu'adh still further; second, Hammad ibn Salama's version through Asim from Shahr ibn Hawshab from Mu'adh — which al-Daraqutni judged closer to the truth since the hadith is known via Shahr despite disagreement over him — is certainly mursal in Ibn Rajab's view and Shahr's own reliability contested; Ahmad also transmits it through Shahr from Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghunam from Mu'adh and through Urwa ibn al-Nazzal and Maymun ibn Abi Shabib, neither of whom heard Mu'adh, with further routes all weak (Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam pp. 602–616).