• Verifying the authenticity of the concise epistle and whether it is drawn from Ibn Taymiyyah’s original treatise on fighting the unbelievers:

If we know with certainty that Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah wrote a work in this field, the question arises: is the present concise epistle actually taken from his original treatise on fighting the unbelievers?

I say: When I first set out to study and critically edit this abridgement of Ibn Taymiyyah’s words, I did my utmost to trace every sentence and phrase back to the Shaykh’s own statements in his other compositions, so that I might gauge the degree of correspondence between them and his broader outlook. After extensive collation and inductive examination, I found that this concise epistle accords perfectly with Shaykh al-Islam’s position as expressed in his other writings, which means that it has been excerpted, in its entirety, from the Shaykh’s original book on this topic.

It likewise indicates that the abridger observed meticulous accuracy and fidelity in transmitting