Shaykh Muhammad ibn Sulaymān al-Bassām thoroughly exposed the defects in those criticisms in a separate treatise entitled Lifting the Veil from al-Najjār’s Fabrications and Annotations on the Tafsīr of Shaykh Abd al-Rahmān al-Sa‘dī.
He cited numerous examples demonstrating al-Najjār’s own errors in what he alleged to be errors committed by the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him. I shall content myself with referring readers to that excellent treatise, which contains a rigorous scholarly critique of the manifest errors into which al-Najjār fell. Here, I shall mention only three of his criticisms, through which I will illustrate a small part of al-Najjār’s misconduct. As for those criticisms requiring scholarly refutation, I refer readers to Shaykh Muhammad al-Bassām’s treatise.
- Al-Najjār made an error and then blamed the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—for it:
In his commentary on the statement of Allah, exalted is He, “Then if he divorces her, she will not be lawful for him afterward until she marries another husband,” the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—said: “That is, a valid marriage which he consummates with her; for a marriage recognized by the Sacred Law is necessarily valid and comprises both the contract and intercourse. This is agreed upon.”
This is how the passage appears in both manuscripts and in the Salafi edition upon which al-Najjār relied. However, he omitted the word “only,” causing the passage to read: “For a marriage recognized by the Sacred Law is not valid.” This was al-Najjār’s doing, not that of the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him. Al-Najjār then wrote in the margin concerning the words “For a marriage recognized by the Sacred Law, etc.”: “The wording is confused. It should read: ‘For a valid marriage recognized by the Sacred Law comprises both the contract and intercourse, according to scholarly consensus.’” Thus, al-Najjār made the error, then declared the shaykh mistaken and amended what he alleged to be the shaykh’s error.
- The insertion of irrelevant comments:
One example is the shaykh’s statement—may Allah have mercy upon him—“As for wrongdoing between a servant and his Lord that falls short of associating partners with Him, it is subject to Allah’s will and wisdom.” Al-Najjār commented: “Concerning this meaning, the author of Jawharat al-Tawhīd said:
Whoever dies without repenting of his sin,
his case is entrusted to his Lord.”
- An objection made where none was warranted:
The shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—said: “Gratitude preserves the blessing already possessed and secures further blessings that were lacking.” Al-Najjār wrote in the margin concerning the words “Gratitude preserves blessings, etc.”: “Scholars expressed this meaning by saying: ‘Gratitude is a tether for what is present and a snare for what is absent’” (1). It was as though he were faulting the shaykh’s choice of words, although there was no error here; there is ample latitude in choosing suitable wording.
The Fifth Observation:
Poor Division of the Text
Al-Najjār redistributed the text into paragraphs and deliberately made them extremely short. Consequently, he separated parts of a single sentence across different lines and severed statements from their context: the conditional clause would appear on one line and its consequence on another, while a proposition would appear on one line and its justification on another. The tafsīr therefore became greatly inflated, even though it could have occupied far fewer pages. Allah knows best the purpose behind such inflation.
These observations are merely examples demonstrating that al-Najjār did not handle this tafsīr faithfully.
This presentation as a whole makes clear that the tafsīr was not published in the form in which the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—wrote it. All its editions were merely reproductions of al-Najjār’s edition, whose editor relied upon the Salafi edition. The Salafi edition, in turn, relied upon the second manuscript, which was not in the shaykh’s own hand and contained some omissions and scribal corruption.
Given this situation, which demonstrates the pressing need to publish this blessed tafsīr in a critically corrected edition as the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—intended, I devoted three years to working on this book, in the hope that this work would