to the book before it reached the distributors. I then sent a telegram to the publisher—who was in Kuwait at the time—imploring him not to put the book on the market until the addendum arrived in printed form so that it could be inserted. I followed the telegram with a detailed letter explaining the whole affair. Yet the book was circulated without the addendum! People said the reason was that Abu Ghuddah was a close friend of that agent; he used to visit him in those days, read the addendum, and then urged him not to release it. Thus Abu Ghuddah obtained exactly what he wanted. Months later I met the publisher and asked why the addendum had not appeared. He gave an answer of no consequence, and to this day I do not know how much responsibility he actually bears for the failure to print the addendum.

Thirdly: It is astonishing that the publisher in question is one of Abu Ghuddah’s intimate friends, and to this very day he continues to sell Abu Ghuddah’s books—despite the attacks they contain against the imams—in his bookstore in Kuwait. Abu Ghuddah knows full well that this man is the publisher, yet he still saddles him with responsibility for the wording found in my footnote, lumping him together with me by means of his habitual lie, the phrase “their statement,” even though the only person who uttered the statement was I myself; the publisher and the printer had nothing to do with it. Look at how he writes: “This is their statement in the footnote to Mukhtaṣar Muslim… printed in Kuwait….” By such wording he usually intends “their statement” to mean the author together with his publisher—our brother Zuhayr al-Shāwish, the proprietor of the well-known publishing house. Overcome by his unjust habit, he dragged in yet another publisher along with me—namely the first Kuwaiti-Egyptian publisher, who, as we have said, is one of his close friends—thereby harming him without realizing it. This calls to mind the famous proverb: “A sensible enemy is better than an ignorant friend.”

Fourthly: His remark that the book was “printed in Kuwait in the first and second editions” is a deliberate deception, for he knows that it was printed in Beirut.