Then Abū Ghuddah—may Allah guide him and purge him of his rancor and spite—went on to say: “They have also written in this book (p. 151), denouncing those in charge of the Prophet’s Mosque and describing them as people who pander to whims, whose faith is feeble, and whose desires dominate them:
‘…I have spoken with a number of respectable men about the need to keep these ignorant folk from the violations they commit, yet the official capable of doing so has not acted—and will not act unless Allah so wills! The reason is that he sides with certain residents of Madinah, yielding to their wishes and caprices, and pays no heed to the sincere advisers among the scholars, even when those advisers are from the very land itself! We complain to Allah of weak faith and the triumph of passion—matters that even monotheism has not remedied—because the love of money holds sway over its people, save those whom Allah protects, and they are but few. The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, spoke the truth when he said, “The trial of my community is wealth.”’ End of their words.”
I say: This passage, like the one before it, shows that I reminded the officials there of the wrongs taking place in the Prophet’s Mosque. Yet Abū Ghuddah, true to his habit of turning facts upside down, treats that as a denunciation of the officials. From this I understood how Abū Ghuddah managed to remain in their employ for about ten years, even though, in creed, they are Salafis while he is Khalafī*! He did so by currying favour with them and by sheer hypocrisy, whereas others stayed with them no more than three years—despite being thought Salafi—simply because they offered advice and reminders, though not without the shortcomings to which every human is prone. Abū Ghuddah, by contrast, excelled in withholding counsel and admonition so as to obtain from them “a handful of coins to fill his belly!”
Before I move the readers on to another passage, I wish to draw attention to the rest of the statement that Abū Ghuddah deliberately excised at the beginning—