And perhaps the only evidence on which the doctor built that doctrine is the story of the Miʿrāj that is falsely and wrongfully attributed to the noble Companion ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās—may Allah be pleased with him—although he himself says1 about this story: “It is a patch-work booklet compiled from a number of fabricated reports that have no basis and no chain of transmission!”

The fact of the matter is that this blanket statement of his is what is actually false, for the book in question contains many authentic hadiths, some of them narrated by the Two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim). The author, however, mixed them with other reports—some fabricated, some baseless, and some weak. I clarified this in my refutation of Dr. al-Būṭī, first published in the journal Al-Tamaddun al-Islāmī and later issued as a separate book, as was mentioned not long ago ⦗145⦘.

5 – Ignorance of the lexical meaning of the word istishfāʿ

This is yet another grievous blunder on the doctor’s part—may Allah rectify him and guide him—for he used the istishfāʿ mentioned in the hadiths of the rain-prayer as proof for the innovated form of tawassul. He said: “We have already shown the recommendation of seeking istishfāʿ through the people of righteousness and piety and the Prophet’s household as occurs in the rain-prayer and elsewhere, and that this is something upon which the majority of the imams and jurists—including al-Shawkānī, Ibn Qudāmah, al-Ṣanʿānī and others—are agreed.” The doctor would never have fallen into this error had he understood the meaning of istishfāʿ in the language. Wishing to enlighten and benefit the readers, we shall cite some of what the lexicons have recorded regarding the meanings of shafāʿah and istishfāʿ: