• Our own age mirrors that of the author in the sheer proliferation and public display of religious innovations, in the weakness of the Muslims and the strength of the unbelievers, and in the spread of the latter’s creeds, ideas, morals, customs, and fashions among the Muslim community. Added to this is the emergence of deviant sects and their ascendancy among the Muslims—chief among them the Rawāfiḍ, the Bāṭiniyyah, and certain Ṣūfī orders.

In the author’s lifetime the unbelievers—the Franks and the Tatars—had prevailed over most Muslim lands; similarly, in our own era the Franks continue to dominate the greater part of the Muslim world politically and intellectually, even after the withdrawal of their armies.

• A further reason is the author’s farsightedness—may Allah have mercy on him—together with his vast learning and acute understanding, which enabled him to address these matters in universal terms suitable for Muslims everywhere and at all times.

This becomes evident when we survey the principal topics he examined, all of which existed in his day and can still be found among Muslims today:

• Imitating the unbelievers and non-Arabs in dress and attire, customs and traditions, language, festivals, celebrations, and the like.
• The spread of doctrinal and practical innovations, such as attachment to those buried in graves and calling upon them instead of Allah, and the innovations and superstitions propagated by Ṣūfī orders among their adherents and others.
• Reviving the rites, customs, relics, and vaunted glories of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance that Islam had erased.
• The dominance of non-Islamic ideas, concepts, and cultures over the minds of many Muslims, along with the rise of philosophy, atheism, and similar currents.

Such is the book in general. I shall now proceed to examine and analyze some of its particular topics.