—the very statement cited above—and he endorsed it without exercising the caution I had displayed!

I then added fourteen authentic ḥadiths recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim, or by one of them, every single one of which his own teacher al-Kawtharī—“the erudite, critical scholar, decisive proof, Imām …,” as his disciple Abū Ghuddah likes to style him—had branded weak, together with one more ḥadith transmitted by Muslim that the same bigoted zealot had himself declared weak. (See pp. 30–34 of the Introduction.)

Nor did Abū Ghuddah utter a word about Shaykh al-Thanawī’s remark in his book Muqaddimat Iʿlāʾ al-Sunan, under the heading “Mention of certain barbs aimed at the Two Ṣaḥīḥs and the strained replies offered for them”:

“What people say—that anyone for whom the Two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim) have narrated has already crossed the bridge—is mere posturing, no more than an affected claim, and it carries no weight.”

Abū Ghuddah passed over this in silence in his annotation to the book (463). He likewise ignored all the previous examples—items he himself had written or had read from his teacher—yet he attacks me over a single ḥadith in al-Bukhārī for which I judged only the chain weak, not the text. After overlooking all of that, he turns around and complains in his “Kalīmāt” that we accused him of “…playing both ends of the rope,” forgetting to mention that we had characterised conduct such as his as weighing with two different scales, measuring with two different measures, or as trying to combine summer and winter on the same rooftop!

Who, after learning these facts, can deny that every one of those descriptions befits Abū Ghuddah? Had this prejudiced zealot been truthful in his grievance, he would have offered a scholarly response to each of the points with which we confronted him, instead of limiting himself to retorting, “A blatant fabrication,” and the like—statements that even the most ignorant and obstinate people can manage, just as the proverb says: “A goat— even if it flies!”

Second: Is this not blatant hypocrisy?

I stated in the Introduction that I possess conclusive proof for what I charged Abū Ghuddah with—namely calculated accommodation (mudārāh), not cringing flattery (mudāhanah).