alone—exalted is He—is its Founder and Legislator. No human being, whoever he may be, is entitled to claim that he has established it or laid down its ordinances. Even the noblest Prophet, Muhammad ﷺ, had no task but to receive the revelation consciously and faithfully and then convey it in full with utmost precision; he was not permitted to alter anything of Allah’s law or revelation. Therefore, for any person, no matter how high his standing, to claim that he is the founder of this blessed, God-given call is in fact a grievous error and a deep wound—if it is not outright major shirk, Allah forbid.

We simply cannot fathom how this could come from a man who spent so many years with his brothers in Aleppo and other Syrian lands engaged in the Salafi daʿwah, whose foremost hallmark and primary concern is to combat every form of verbal idolatry, let alone doctrinal shirk—only to break away from them all. May Allah guide us and him, and shield us from slips, trials, and the snares of passion.

Someone may try to excuse the author by saying that, by this title, he merely intended to portray himself as a renewer of the Salafi call, not as its originator or the framer of its teachings. It is true that, in every age, the Muslim community has produced renewers, and in the author’s own eyes he is one of them.

We reply: Yes, across the ages there have indeed been renewers of the true call of Islam, but the gulf between the author and those renewers is vast. It would be enough honor for him to be counted a follower of any one of them. Even if, for the sake of argument, we conceded his attempt to number himself among them, he would still be obliged to specify the sphere of his alleged renewal—whether a given country or region—rather than casting it