“By Allah, I have witnessed the most astonishing thing: their unanimous insistence on declaring it obligatory, their blind imitation of one another in that verdict, and their method of adducing proofs that are untenable—whether from the standpoint of transmission or of understanding. They twist the texts that contradict them—reports from the early generations and the well-known statements of the leading Imams—and then act as though those texts never existed. This has led me, regrettably, to feel that what they have written was produced under the sway of human emotion, personal impulse, and local convention, not in submission to the proofs of the Shari‘ah …” (1)
These expressions—and others of the same sort—were the cause of the gulf that opened between the Shaykh, may Allah have mercy on him, and the scholars of his age. They contain an overreach that his opponents could not overlook, especially the Salafis, such as Shaykh Ḥamūd b. ʿAbd Allah al-Tuwayjirī and Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Ḥabīb Allah al-Sindī, may Allah have mercy on them both, and others besides.
(1) al-Radd al-Mufhim, p. 6.
The book contains many forceful remarks, such as his words about our learned shaykh Hamud al-Tuwayjiri—may Allah have mercy on him:
“The shaykh is a consummate expert—if the truth be told—in leading his readers astray and preventing them from benefiting from their scholars’ statements by twisting their meanings and nullifying their plain sense, exactly as the people of whims do when they undermine the texts of the Book, the Sunnah, and the imams regarding the divine names and attributes. The shaykh is well aware of their method, yet it seems their disease has infected him—may Allah preserve him—even in matters of legal rulings. May Allah guide him.” End quote.
Similar passages occur frequently. It would have been better if the heirs—may Allah richly reward them—had, when overseeing its publication, excised such language, confined the work to the shaykh’s scholarly discussion of his opponents’ evidences, and released it under the title Mukhtasar al-Radd al-Mufhim …, especially since the printing took place after both shaykhs had passed away. Suppressing polemical disputes would have been preferable to circulating them.