Prefatory Note

I first met Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattah “Abu Ghudda” in his own city, Aleppo, a little more than twenty years ago. From the outset I found him to be a man blindly partisan to the Hanafi school. During one of his lessons in his mosque in Aleppo he ruled that it is permissible to treat an illness with wine if so advised by a competent Muslim physician. I said to him, “That is not enough; the physician must also be knowledgeable of the sunnah. In the sunnah, for example, wine is described as a disease, not a remedy. How can a Muslim doctor who knows his religion prescribe as medicine something that his Prophet ﷺ called a disease?”

He replied, “Perhaps the ḥadīth is weak and unreliable.” I said, “How can that be when it is recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (1)?” He answered, “We can look it up to make sure.” One of those present—who was a friend to both of us—then asked him, “If it proves authentic, will you follow it or the madhhab?” He said, “The madhhab!”

Subsequently I became even more certain of his extreme partisanship through the reports that reached me of his assaults, in sermons and lessons, on the Salafi call and those who advocate it. Because of this, some of our brothers in Aleppo strove earnestly to arrange meetings between him and me so that I might discuss his bias against the sunnah and explain the call to him. Yet he never accepted any invitation to meet, not even privately.