—specifically, against those who charge the abandoner of prayer with unbelief—he tracked down their proofs, set forth what supports them and what undermines them, then gathered the opposing evidence and examined it in exactly the same way, harmonizing the two bodies of texts in a sober and forceful style. At times, however, a measure of leniency accompanies his grading of ḥadiths when he accepts weak reports on the strength of subsidiary chains, and this occasionally leads him to forced reconciliations with the sound narrations that clearly state the unbelief of the one who neglects the prayer. He does so, for example, with the report of Abū al-Dardāʾ concerning the prayer: “ … whoever abandons it has left the faith-community.” After discussing the report and showing that its chain of transmission is weak, he returns to reinforce it with corroborating narrations; yet in reality those corroborations are inadequate and cannot elevate the ḥadīth. He then takes an even more unusual step, interpreting the “departure” mentioned in the text as a lesser departure, short of outright apostasy. Other instances of this leniency and interpretive stretching appear as well, such as with the ḥadīth recorded in al-Ḍaʿīfah (6037).

The fact remains that his book is extremely valuable in its field: he has collected everything relevant to the topic—affirmations and negations, acceptances and rejections—without any visible bias for or against anyone. The best part of the work, in my view, is the first chapter of the second section, which he himself entitles “A presentation of specific proofs showing that the one who abandons the prayer does not leave the fold of Islam,” and the proofs he cites there number twelve. ⦗64⦘