in such sweeping fashion, for that elastic title suggests to readers that he is the renewer of Islam for the entire Muslim world in our age—yet how distant he is from such a claim!

Moreover, among the fundamental traits required of a Muslim preacher are humility and the avoidance of any love for prominence, self-glorification, or grandiose pretension. These are deadly ailments: whoever pursues them and clings to them is stripped of the very fitness for daʿwah, robbed of a keen weapon with which to defeat its enemies, and left with deeds that scatter like drifting dust—Allah’s protection is sought. O Allah, grant us Your safeguarding and Your guidance.

We have also leafed through the book in question in haste and found a number of mistakes. We shall point out some of them in their proper place. Among them is his statement on p. 237, while discussing the chain of transmission for the previous story: “In the isnad of this hadith there is a man called Rawh ibn Salah; the majority of scholars and Ibn ʿAdī declared him weak, and Ibn Yunus said, ‘He transmits objectionable reports.’” This is sheer error whose cause we do not understand, for that man—Rawh ibn Salah—is, in fact, the single defect in the third hadith, as will be clarified later.