mere custom and social habit—a manifest error that no one should be taken in by. Allah is the One who grants success.

I believe that the author—may Allah pardon me and him—has, by espousing this view, opened a wide gate to evil that cannot be closed unless the Prophet’s ﷺ commands and devotional Sunnah are given the esteem and consideration they deserve. For if he feels free to abandon dyeing, even though it is authentically established from the Prophet ﷺ both in practice and instruction, merely because it clashes with the habits of today’s Muslims, what is to prevent someone else—who possesses far less knowledge of the Sunnah and its status than the author—from moving past this single issue to others, then to still more, permitting their wholesale neglect despite the Prophet’s ﷺ explicit commands and earnest encouragement, all on the grounds that they run counter to Muslim custom and taste? And which Muslims, exactly—the Muslims of the twentieth century?

We have long, and still, complained that most Muslims refrain from acting on hadith out of blind loyalty to their imams. We likewise deplore the way some Sufis flout the divine commands on the pretext that they do not suit their personal sensibilities. Yet here we are today—while professing zeal for Islam and adherence to the Sunnah—faced with a new kind of partisanship, a modern Sufism in which we exalt our own tastes and customs and cling to them in preference to his ﷺ guidance and orders, without any precedent among the early generations and without an imam whose knowledge and discernment can serve as a model!

A few days ago I read the book “Purified Islam”1 by one of the earnest writers.