receive hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year…), yet he does not single out the Salafis—upon whom he had directly poured his accusation—for the same exoneration. Does this not mean, then, that in his eyes the Salafis are certainly outside the fold of Islam? Where, then, is the gallantry and good character of which he boasted?

Here I remind him of the Prophet’s ﷺ words: “If any Muslim declares another Muslim to be an unbeliever, then if the latter is truly an unbeliever it is so; otherwise the former himself has fallen into unbelief.” Perhaps this will shame him into abandoning pretensions that are not his, restrain him from pronouncing takfīr on monotheistic Muslims, and move him to repent to Allah with a sincere, unfeigned, and uncontentious repentance.

Fourth—among his endless fabrications:

On pp. 10–11 Abu Ghuddah mentions the very descriptions we had rightly applied to him in the Introduction—traits he actually displayed in his unjust memorandum—while feigning innocence of them all, without attempting to produce even a semblance of proof. Any fair-minded reader, free from whim or ulterior motive, will therefore indict him on every count when he sees that we have furnished evidence for everything we attributed to him in the Introduction, whereas Abu Ghuddah tries to absolve himself in his “Statements” by merely declaring: “This is outright slander.”

The greatest criminal on earth could clear his name with so cheap a line as “outright slander.” A truly innocent and honorable man, however, answers proof with proof and evidence with evidence. That Abu Ghuddah has not done, nor will he ever do, because he knows that if he did he would be like a man digging his own grave with his own hoof.

This brief space does not allow us to repeat all the evidence we set forth in the Introduction concerning the traits we ascribed to him—especially since in his “Statements” there is