Fabrication Attributed to Ustadh al-Shaqfa.

Abu Ghuddah next wrote: “No sooner had its author learned of that tampering than his anger at them boiled over. He dispatched to me a letter in his own hand, expressing … and deploring the forgery perpetrated against him … and the lies they had committed …” and so on.

I say: Any reader can readily detect this false and baseless attribution on Abu Ghuddah’s part to the whole group simply by returning to the text of Ustadh Fahr’s book, reproduced in facsimile after Abu Ghuddah’s closing words. There one finds what exposes the lie, for it states:

“This addition was inserted by the publisher, Mahmud Mahdi Istanbuli, without my knowledge … I had entertained good expectations of him when he offered to bring out my book … but the publisher exploited that authorization … and I have warned the publisher.”

A similar statement appears in Ustadh Fahr’s other book, whose facsimile follows the first. From this it is clear that Abu Ghuddah did not merely lie about the group by attributing the alleged interpolation to all of them instead of limiting it to the publisher alone, as Ustadh Fahr’s own words plainly indicate; he also lied about the Ustadh himself in his earlier claim: “No sooner had the author learned …”