by your Lord, how could he consider himself entitled to tamper so disgracefully with the book of the hadith master Ibn Kathīr, violating scholarly integrity by adding headings of his own, deleting material from its pages, declaring its authentic hadiths weak, or nullifying their meanings in the name of interpretation and reason?!

I do not know—by Allah—how the book’s publisher was taken in by him! He says in his introduction:

“As for proofreading and scholarly editing, we were fortunate—praise be to Allah—to have His Eminence Shaykh Muhammad undertake them. His commendable efforts rid the book of … of linguistic errors and the many corruptions in the proper names appearing in it, and corrected many of the passages it contains”!

It is astonishing—by Allah—that this (astute) man should be described in such terms, when the book contains hundreds of examples showing that precisely the opposite is true! He has corrupted many of its passages and committed countless linguistic errors and distortions on a single page! This shows that Saudi Arabia thinks far too highly of the likes of this man from al-Azhar, reminding me of the familiar proverb: “In our land, even lowly birds become eagles!” Here are some examples I came across in the book’s first volume:

1 – p. (114): “And he removes the jummah (tuft of hair; so written, with a jīm and in the genitive!) of all who have one.” The correct reading is humah—with an undotted hā and an undoubled mīm—meaning venom!

He repeated this error on page (169) and added a comment that did not confirm it to be a scholarly error; he said: