- His failure to cover all the issues that properly belong to a chapter—such as the “recommended baths” and similar topics.
- Citing within a single question mutually conflicting opinions without indicating which of them is preferable.
- Vacillating in one and the same passage: he selects an opinion at the beginning of the discussion and then overturns it at the end.
- Giving the upper hand, among competing views, to one that does not deserve preference because its proof is weak while the evidence for the opposing view is strong.
- Contradicting an authentic hadith that has no counter-report in several issues.
This last category is among the strangest slips committed by the author, for it is flatly at odds with his stated aim of directing readers to follow the Sunnah. The only excuse he offers for such opposition is either that the majority did not act upon the hadith in certain matters, or that he knows of no one who did so in another. Yet this is the very pretext advanced by blind imitators when they reject the Sunnah and fight against it. Presently we shall quote Imam al-Shafi‘i—may Allah reward him well—whose words demolish this specious argument and uproot it completely.
It is perhaps superfluous to add that, in annotating the book and pointing out its errors, I do not intend in the least to belittle its worth or withhold its due. My sole purpose is to champion the truth with the truth and, so far as possible, to safeguard Fiqh al-Sunnah from error. That will make people more likely to turn to it and benefit from it, and it will better silence the tongues of those who attack the idea, whether justly or unjustly. Perhaps the author—may Allah grant him ever more success—will reconsider