“ʿIyād reported a difference of opinion, noting that some said: ‘It is a metaphor for the mark of his created nature.’ This is a weak view.”

Yet that (astute) man was not content merely to favor this false interpretation; several pages later, he asserted it categorically, saying (p. 118):

“The differences between the hadith reports concerning where the Dajjāl will appear … suggest that the Dajjāl is intended to symbolize evil and its ascendancy …”!

This is precisely what he asserted categorically in his foreword to the book, saying (p. 9):

“We then followed those who hold that the appearance of the Mahdī and the descent of Jesus, peace be upon him, symbolize the triumph of good over evil, and that the Dajjāl symbolizes the spread of tribulation and the ascendancy of misguidance for a period of time …”!

I say: This (astute) man is the head of the mission of al-Azhar al-Sharīf in (Lebanon), as printed beneath his name on the book’s cover.

In his annotations on the aforementioned book, he has gravely wronged both its author and the Prophetic hadith, demonstrating his profound ignorance of the latter! He categorically declared authentic hadiths weak because his heart could not accept them! No scholar had preceded him in doing so—as with the hadith of al-Jassāsah; see (pp. 6, 69, and 101), which Muslim narrated, and the hadith of the Mahdī (p. 37)—yet he paid no heed to the author Ibn Kathīr’s authentication of some of them (pp. 42 and 43). Indeed, he even declared another hadith fabricated, although Muslim narrated it in his Sahīh (pp. 58–59)!