First: that in this brief treatise Shaykh al-Islam appears not to endorse offensive jihad (jihad al-ṭalab), whereas in his other books and writings he explicitly affirms it.

Second: that in this treatise he seems to state that fighting the unbelievers is warranted only because they fight us, not because of their unbelief, while in his other works he says otherwise.

As for the first premise: in my view it was advanced for two reasons.

The first reason is that this epistle is terse and compressed; because of that brevity, readers have differed in determining its intent. Those who deny offensive jihad—a recently introduced view—took hold of it with delight and imagined that Shaykh al-Islam shared their position.

By contrast, the scholars—early and late—who uphold offensive jihad hastened to reject this concise treatise, or parts of it, because it conflicts with what is stated in Shaykh al-Islam’s other books and contradicts