when greeting her—yet, they add, only if it is done “without desire.” We, and others as well, said to some of those party members, “Suppose someone did that to your own sister or your wife.” At that they fell silent, unable to answer.

This is but one example among many issues they advance—issues that stand far removed from the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and plain common sense. There is no room here to list them all; we have touched on a few of their oddities and deviations from sound knowledge only to make the following point:

Those people—and anyone who genuinely cares about possessing sound knowledge derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah on the basis of solid legal principles and their proper application to subsidiary rulings—must, after studying the Qur’an and Sunnah, make it their practice to read the works of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, including this blessed epistle. By doing so they will train themselves in correct deduction and sound elaboration, and they will be spared from issuing interpretations and opinions that no rational person would dare utter or put to paper, such as the examples cited above.

The matters we have mentioned are only some of the topics contained in this valuable treatise. It includes still other discussions and benefits that the reader will encounter, God willing. Taken as a whole, the work is unique in its field, without parallel among its peers, for most of its contents are unprecedented even in comparable writings—such as Al-Hijāb by the scholar Abul-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī, my own two-volume work The Muslim Woman’s Veil, and others. Let the reader, then, cling to it with his molars and thank Allah for making him one of those who read and benefit from the books of Ibn Taymiyyah, for he is truly “one who knows Allah,” as are all who follow his path.