If a man from the People of the Book greets us with the Islamic greeting, he says

The Shaykh : In the previous lesson, we recited for you the hadith of Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) regarding her story with the Jews who greeted the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) with the poisoned phrase, which is their saying: "As-sam 'alaykum" (Death be upon you). In it, the Messenger (peace be upon him) returned the greeting to them with the same: meaning he said: . As for Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her), she went further than them, cursing them and pouring the anger of Allah upon them. It remains for us to mention a legal ruling after we mentioned in the previous lesson that it is not permissible to transgress against the dhimmis (protected non-Muslims) in the manner Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) did, and at the same time, as we mentioned, it is not permissible to be too friendly with them in a way that contradicts the Shari'ah. We mentioned from this the prohibition by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) of initiating the greeting to them. If the matter is thus, then it means that the Muslim in his dealings with the dhimmis must conduct himself with them within the limits of the Shari'ah, not within the limits of personal logic or personal intellect. From here we say: If a man from the People of the Book greets us with this Islamic greeting and says to us: "As-salamu 'alaykum" (Peace be upon you); what do we say? Some people may understand from this hadith and what is similar to it that returning the greeting to the dhimmi should be: "Wa 'alaykum" (And upon you) only. Is that the case? This issue has details: If we look at another hadith reported from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he said: . If we look at this hadith, we find that it contains a ruling with a stated cause, which is: if the Jews greet you, one of them says: "As-sam 'alaykum." This clarifies that our returning to them with this abbreviated phrase "Wa 'alaykum" is only appropriate when he twists his tongue with the greeting, when he says: "As-sam 'alaykum." One might understand from it the legal greeting, or one might understand from it the Jewish greeting. But if his greeting is explicit, clear, and evident, as some Christians do today, for example, who have mixed with Muslims and lived alongside them and picked up their greeting from them, and one of them says "As-salamu 'alaykum" clearly, do we say "Wa 'alaykum" or do we say as they said, "Wa 'alaykum as-salam" (And upon you peace)? If we look first at the text of the Noble Qur'an: at least, and secondly to the hadith we mentioned earlier where one of them says: "As-sam 'alaykum" and you say "Wa 'alaykum," we take from this verse and this hadith that if the greeting of the dhimmi is correct, clear, and explicit, we return it to him likewise explicitly, clearly, and evidently. But if it is a poisoned greeting, as we said, then we understand it and alert him that we are not oblivious, and he says: "Wa 'alaykum." He might say, "My brother, why do you say it this way? I said to you 'As-salamu 'alaykum'!" We say, "Done, we returned it to you, whether you said 'As-salamu 'alaykum' truly or said it as a poison." This is what I wanted to mention on the occasion of the hadith of the previous lesson.