Who Are the Single-Minded?

Imam al-Mundhirī, the well-known collector of al-Targhīb wa al-Tarhīb, rendered here as The Discouragement to Good and The Discouragement to Evil^**, calls them likewise al-mufarridūn — those given over to remembrance and mocked for it, al-mūlaʿūn bi-dhikri Allāh, "those burning with the remembrance of Allah." Imam al-Nawawī, in his commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, records that some of the ʿulamāʾ read the word not mufarridūn but mufridūn, "those who single themselves out" — a reading given also by Ibn Qutaybah and others, and said to describe originally those whose relatives had died, leaving them alone in the world and given over, in that solitude, to the remembrance of Allah. A further narration takes the word to describe those who tremble perpetually at the mention of Allah, iḥtazzū fī dhikri Allāh.