—and in detail; Allah is sufficient to call you to account. Yes indeed, you have produced what you imagine to be a proof for your claim, for you say (p. 38):

“The nearest proof to repel this slander of theirs is that I have packed my books and marginal notes with the words of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and Imam Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on them both—and I have praised them… Shaykh al-Kawtharī—may Allah have mercy on him and forgive us and him—took issue with those two Imams according to his own opinion and ijtihād (!). Had I been committed to everything al-Kawtharī says, I would have taken issue with the two Shaykhs as he did and followed his stance toward them, may Allah have mercy on them, whereas the facts prove the opposite!”

Our answer to this drivel is several-fold:

1. You have made your sole evidence that you are not bound to everything al-Kawtharī says the fact that you do not oppose the two Shaykhs as your teacher al-Kawtharī did. By Allah, this is the mockery of the age. Even if you now pretend not to oppose them, does that absolve you of your own admission that you are still a Kawtharī? Put differently: if a Ḥanafī, for example, disagrees with his Imām on one single issue, does that remove him from being a Ḥanafī? The answer is no, as every rational person realizes and as your patron Abū al-Hasanāt al-Lakhnawī explicitly states in al-Fawāʾid al-Bahiyya (1). Hence this “proof” of yours actually testifies against you: you remain a Kawtharī in every respect in which we have described al-Kawtharī as deviant and astray from the early generations and the leading ḥadith scholars. Were it otherwise, you would have openly disowned all of that just as you openly disowned his opposition, especially since we granted you ample opportunity by asking you to make that public declaration. Can any intelligent person interpret your refusal to do so as anything but conclusive evidence that you are a Kawtharī one hundred—