I say: The very precedent that allowed the Companions—and those who succeeded them—to declare one another mistaken without the slightest hesitation comes from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ himself, for he is the one who laid down this practice. It is authentically reported in the two Ṣaḥīḥs and elsewhere, on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, that the Prophet ﷺ said to Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq after the latter interpreted a man’s dream: “You have got part of it right and part of it wrong.”

Such correction produced no ill effect in their hearts: first, because those hearts were free of rancor and suspicion; and second, because they knew that pointing out an error carries none of the disparagement unbecoming a Muslim. This is the very opposite of the behavior of certain partisans whose hearts are filled with hatred and malice toward the people of the sunnah and with evil thoughts about them. Let a Sunni utter but one word of truth in sincere counsel, reminder, or instruction, and these enemies of the sunnah, driven by their spite and bad opinion, rush to twist it into its opposite. This is exactly what Abū Ghuddah has done in his “Kalimat.” “And the wrongdoers will soon know to what final place they shall return” (Q 26:227).

From what has been set forth you can see that Abū Ghuddah has returned defeated and disappointed with this last arrow he shot at me, just as he has with every other arrow and accusation already unmasked and turned back upon him. Such is the way of every transgressing sinner who imagines that through his scheming and plotting he harms others and injects them with his poison, when in truth he is like one who hastens to his own destruction with his very hoof.

I ask Allah, the Exalted, to discipline us with the manners of Islam and to endow us with the character of the sincere and truthful believers whose hearts He has purified