First: he clears the Najdis of that charge—although the matter has nothing to do with them—so that they will be pleased with him and will harbor no suspicions about him. That the rest of the Salafis and other people of monotheism whom Abū Ghuddah had previously maligned might go on thinking ill of him is of no concern to him now, for the criterion he follows is not Allah’s pleasure and avoidance of His wrath but rather the preservation of the post that showers him with money and material gain. Otherwise, tell me—by your Lord—why did he dodge the question about the very accusation leveled against him, namely his slander of the Syrian Salafis? He never clarified his position on that slander, either by affirming or denying it. He did not say, for example, “Yes, they are—as we said before—‘their souls recoil and feel repulsed whenever the Prophet ﷺ is mentioned.’” Nor did he say, as we had hoped he would, “Glory be to You! This is a monstrous calumny; I never uttered any of the words the commentator on the book ‘Sufism’ attributed to me.” Instead, he wriggles and evades, refusing to say a single word about the Salafis—the very people he had directly accused of that fabrication—and turns the discussion toward the Najdis, who are nowhere mentioned in the allegation that was ascribed to him and that he himself reproduced in his “Words.” The accusation concerns only the Salafis of Aleppo in particular. No proverb suits him better than, “Are you still squirming, O fox, after you have already been caught in the snare?”

In sum, precisely when Abū Ghuddah seeks to prove that the charge attributed to him is sheer fabrication, he ends up condemning himself with his own tongue and confirming the charge in his own person—fulfilling Allah’s words, “Evil plotting envelops only its authors” [Qur’an 35:43]; and exemplifying the sayings, “He fled from death only to fall headlong into it,” and “Baraqish brought ruin upon herself.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ spoke the truth when he said, “Whoever attributes to a believer what is not in him, Allah will lodge him in the mire of…"