That said, I must at this point call attention to some of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Sindī’s distortions, obfuscations, and polemics in his book “Ḥijābuhu,” his exploitation of certain scholars’ lapses, and his refusal to apply the very critical principles those scholars established for later generations so that people would adhere to them and entrust their intellects to them—instead of deviating from them by imitating those scholars precisely where they contradicted their own rules. He did just that in his biographical note on al-Sabīʿī and others when treating the ḥadīth of the Khathʿamī woman (p. 26). I say:

First: On the same page (49) he repeats twice the claim that the chain of this ḥadīth is sound, and on the following page he underscores it again, invoking the well-known proverb, “A goat, even if it flies.” Yet this is no more than an empty assertion. He never backed it up by at least presenting a biographical entry for its transmitter Nabhān and citing what all the prominent critics have said about him; he was content merely to quote a statement of approval while suppressing the verdicts of anonymity. The points that follow will make this plainer.

Second: He concealed al-Ḥāfiẓ’s rating in al-Taqrīb: “maqbūl” (acceptable), knowing that this term indicates the narrator’s ḥadīth is weak and that it contradicts al-Ḥāfiẓ’s own remark about him in Fatḥ al-Bārī—a remark that, as shown above, has no scholarly basis.

Third: After citing the statement in Fatḥ al-Bārī he added, “and it was transmitted and endorsed by the erudite al-Mubārakfūrī in Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī.” This is a lie against al-Mubārakfūrī, for mere transmission does not amount to endorsement, as every specialist knows—especially since he also quoted al-Ḥāfiẓ’s observation in… ⦗69⦘