Praise belongs to Allah, who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth so that He might cause it to prevail over every other way of life; Allah is sufficient as a Witness. I bear witness that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah alone, without partner, affirming His oneness; and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. May Allah bless him, his family, and his Companions, and grant them ever-increasing peace.

To continue: it is incumbent upon us to honor our scholars within the limits prescribed by the Sacred Law, as the Exalted says, “Allah will raise in rank those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge” (Qur’an 58:11), and He says, “Say, ‘Are those who know equal to those who do not know?’” (Qur’an 39:9). The Prophet ﷺ said, “The scholars are the heirs of the prophets, and the superiority of a scholar over a mere worshipper is like the superiority of the moon over the rest of the heavenly bodies.”

This duty applies especially to the reviving scholars who renew Allah’s religion and to the sincere callers who invite to Allah with wisdom, fair exhortation, and debate in the best manner. Their right over us is to emulate them, respect them, ask Allah’s mercy for them, and pray for them in gratitude for the responsibilities they shouldered, the truths they clarified, and the falsehoods they repelled.

Instead, we find—among certain writers and would-be scholars—people who heap accusations upon them, attribute to them what they are innocent of, and attempt to turn people away from their message, whether out of malice, faulty belief, or reliance on the statements of their enemies. An example came to my attention in a book entitled The History of Islamic Schools in Politics and Creed and The History of the Jurisprudential Schools by Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahrah. In it he speaks of two great Imams and sincere callers to Allah—Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and Shaykh al-Islam Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, may Allah have mercy on them—and levels against them the very same charges that their misguiding adversaries have circulated in every age, alarmed as those foes are by the call to reform.