[confuse] the Sunnah with religious innovation in many instances. They may even reverse matters, treating the innovation those imams condemned as the Sunnah, and the Sunnah those imams praised as innovation. They judge accordingly, until they themselves fall into innovation and hostility towards their imams’ path of Sunnah, while loving and supporting the path of the innovators whom their imams ordered to be punished. Their position entails declaring their own imams disbelievers, cursing them, and disavowing them. They may curse innovators, yet the curse falls upon themselves—the opposite of what happens to a believer. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “Do you not see how Allah turns the insults of Quraysh away from me? They insult Mudhammam (the blameworthy), while I am Muhammad (the praised).”

With these people, the reverse is true: they insult innovators, intending others, while they themselves are the innovators. They are like someone who curses wrongdoers while he himself is the wrongdoer, or one of them. All this falls under the words of Allah Most High:

“What of one whose evil deeds have been made appealing to him, so that he regards them as good?”

[Sūrah Fātir 8]

Consider this in light of several matters.

First: Mālik spoke extensively about condemning innovators, shunning them, and punishing them.