The hadith, however, actually reads:

“Break down your food through remembrance of Allah and prayer, and do not go to sleep after eating it, lest your hearts grow hard.”

He misread “Break down” as “Season”! And “do not go to sleep after eating it” as “do not eat it all up”—then built his delicate interpretation upon these misreadings!!

This is how a number of hadith scholars transmitted it, and how al-Suyūtī included it in al-Jāmiʿ al-Saghīr. Had he consulted it—as even beginning students do, let alone the “head of the mission”—he would have discovered the original wording of the hadith and avoided such an appalling distortion!

Moreover, even in this transmitted wording, the hadith is fabricated, as I established in al-Ahādīth al-Mawdūʿa (115). Consider, then, the standard of this (clever fellow)’s research! For instead* of recognizing the correct wording of the hadith and pointing out its fabrication, he turned it into a hadith with no basis, then proceeded to comment on it!!!

In short, this man’s editing of the book—and annotations of this kind—is the strongest evidence that he is unqualified to edit even a short treatise by a worthy scholar of the early generations! How, then, could he be qualified to edit a massive work by the hadith master Ibn Kathīr, may Allah Most High have mercy on him?! Or to arbitrarily declare weak hadiths authentic and authentic ones weak, without adhering to the principles of the critics and experts in narrator evaluation, and to interpret them contrary to the scholars’ understanding?! His ignorance reaches a degree no one could imagine! What would any sensible person say of a man who does not understand the Prophet’s words, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, concerning those who enter Paradise without being called to account: