—was vilified by his enemies as “a poet, a sorcerer, a madman.” How much more, then, should we expect the enemies of the Sunnah to brand the people of the Sunnah with accusations from which they are entirely free!

If some readers find it hard to believe that these lying charges actually came from Abū Ghuddah on the ground that they are not written in any of his books, let them recall that proof need not be confined to books—Abū Ghuddah himself concedes as much, for he says in his Kalimāt (p. 21):

“I challenge anyone to prove that I have ever uttered any of the things they falsely and slanderously claim—in my books, my classes, or in anything I have written or compiled.”

Regarding the first accusation—the charge of revulsion—Abū Ghuddah’s own admission and his failure to repudiate it, as noted earlier, are sufficient proof that it did in fact issue from him. Even if we supposed that, after we confronted him with the takfīr of the Salafis implicit in his words, he tried belatedly to retract—“too late to cry over spilt milk,” as the proverb goes—upright eyewitnesses would then present themselves to testify against him. Therefore it would be far better for him to acknowledge that his statement was a slip for which Satan enticed him, repent of it—and perhaps he will. Should he refuse, that is nothing but the very arrogance about which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “No one will enter Paradise who harbors an atom’s weight of arrogance in his heart.” He then explained: “Arrogance is rejecting the truth after it becomes clear and belittling people,” that is, attacking them without right—precisely what Abū Ghuddah, may Allah guide him, has done.

As for the other accusation, we possess a recording of his own voice, as already mentioned; that alone is the strongest possible proof and a decisive condemnation.

Nor need we look far afield: here is a certain doctor, a lecturer in one of the colleges of Sharīʿah, who declares in a book he has published