as some people imagine—that it is enough merely to acquaint Muslims with tawḥīd (monotheism) and the Sunnah, without ever exposing acts of shirk (polytheism) and innovation, and that one should simply remain silent about such matters. This is a shortsighted view, born of scant knowledge of the reality of tawḥīd, which stands in stark opposition to shirk, and of the Sunnah, which stands in stark opposition to innovation. At the same time, it betrays ignorance of the fact that even a learned man can slip into innovation, for the reasons that lead to it are numerous—too many to list here. I shall mention only one of them and illustrate it with an example.

Among the causes of innovation in religion are weak and fabricated hadiths. A scholar may be unaware that a particular report is unsound, assume it to be authentic, act upon it, and seek closeness to Allah thereby. Students and laypeople then imitate him, and the practice soon becomes an accepted “sunnah.”

Take, for instance, the esteemed scholar and meticulous researcher Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī. He authored the valuable work Reforming the Mosques from Innovations and Customs, from which I have benefited greatly in the project mentioned earlier. Yet even he devoted a chapter to matters that demand caution, in which he stated