For such conduct plainly violates the scholarly trust incumbent upon them, as is obvious. The one who has assumed the chief burden of this concealment is Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Sindī—may Allah guide him—for he went further and led his readers to imagine that the concealment was something al-Dhahabī himself had done, whereas al-Dhahabī is completely innocent of it. Moreover, following al-Shinqīṭī, al-Tuwijrī, and Ibn ʿUthaymīn, he mentioned only the report of ʿĀʾishah out of the three ḥadiths. After noting its well-known broken chain (pp. 13–14) he wrote:

“I say: Its chain contains another decisive flaw, namely that Saʿīd ibn Bashīr is munkar al-ḥadīth (his narrations are denounced as unreliable). Imām al-Dhahabī said…”

He then filled six full lines with nothing but statements of censure and appended the reference: “Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl, by Imām al-Dhahabī, 2/128.”

I say: If the readers were to return to that very source from which al-Sindī quoted these words, they would find something truly astonishing—a strange boldness in distortion and misguidance—for he omitted from the Mīzān material that upsets the balance of fair critique. Here, then, is some of what he omitted—may Allah guide him.