and thank you for your reply. You're right, it could very well be that they were genuinely confused by Allah’s SWT leave. But, it’s hard to believe this was the case as narrating the hadith in order to remind their shaykh of the kalimah would be just as disrespectful if not more so. I think they purposely confused the chain of narration to get their shaykh to correct them and say the shahadah in the process. This is what these Sfers have understood as well. http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/show...te-the-Kalimah Now, what about Hassan RA and Husain RA? They knew full well how to make wudhu when they requested the old man judge which one of them was incorrectly making wudhu. The plan was to make the old man indirectly realize his mistakes by seeing them both perform wudhu properly and it worked. So they did lie but only out consideration for the old man's honor. So perhaps 'lies' of this nature are actually good..wallahu a'lam. EDIT - I really apologize. I don’t know if they would all agree with my point here. The OP in the thread said the students narrated 2 different chains. Even so though, I think it still could be considered ‘acting’ since what they did was planned and for the purpose of getting their Shaykh to intervene. Wallahu a’lam.