Among the deviations that have befallen Muslims in their conduct, character, and everyday customs are the following:
• Envy, injustice, and misappropriation;
• Miserliness with both wealth and knowledge;
• Denying the truth that others possess during disputes;
• Imitating the unbelievers in dress and—without necessity—peppering one’s speech with their languages.

As for the errors that touch on beliefs and intentions, they include:
• Excessive veneration of prophets and the righteous;
• Distorting words from their intended meanings, just as the various sects have done—the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, the Khārijites, the Rāfiḍah, certain Ashʿarites, and their likes.

They also comprise building mosques over graves, circumambulating them, calling upon their occupants instead of Allah, rubbing against them for blessing, and similar innovations and acts of shirk into which many of the ignorant, the innovators, the Sufi orders, the Shiʿah, and others have fallen. Added to that are such practices as “worship” through musical chanting, ecstatic listening, singing and dancing, and admiring attractive images under the banner of “spiritual reform,” exactly as the Sufi paths—by which Muslims have been sorely tried—continue to do. Likewise are sectarianism, discord in religion, and hardness of heart.

The author has exhaustively catalogued and detailed these issues in such a way that no one who consults this book can plead ignorance of them or of their rulings. All these matters, and many more that he cites, infiltrated the Ummah because of its imitation of other nations.

It is worth noting that these deviations still persist among Muslims—and in some respects have even worsened since the author’s own time. Sufism, with its numerous orders, innovated rituals, idolatrous practices, and devilish methods, continues to bear its bitter fruits: fragmenting the Muslims, turning them into divergent factions and antagonistic parties, and misleading the masses.