al-Sahihah (266)—without attribution, of course—the documentation of the hadith, which states: “... and Ahmad (1/153).” This is an error. The correct wording is: “and Abdullah ibn Ahmad ...,” as I have corrected it in my own copy. Moreover, he concealed from his readers al-Tirmidhi’s grading of it as hasan, al-Hakim’s and al-Dhahabi’s authentication of it, and my concurrence with al-Tirmidhi.

Even more astonishing and worse is that he imitated me (p. 518/25) in declaring hadith no. 1681 of al-Da'ifah weak, and his Shaykh Shu'ayb agreed with him in this. Yet I had retracted that judgment and transferred it to al-Sahihah (2827 and 2828), on account of corroborating reports that I came across. How much the two of them resemble the jinn of whom Allah says: “Those whom they invoke seek a means of nearness to their Lord, striving to see which of them is nearer ...”—the verse! Had the man truly sought reform and offered sincere counsel, he would have tried to salvage whatever he could of hadiths weak in their chains by tracing their routes and corroborating reports in order to strengthen them—had he been qualified to do so. Declaring authentic hadiths weak is no difficult task for atheists, let alone hypocrites and followers of vain desires such as Abu Rayyah and his hangers-on.

In short, this category does contain hadiths that are genuinely weak, whose weakness I had indicated in the introduction, as mentioned earlier, and whose weakness I discussed in detail in some of my works cited above. The man took their conclusions and presented them to readers as the product of his own effort and critical verification!

The other category comprises cases in which he departed extravagantly from scholarly principles and followed his own desires. The number of authentic hadiths against which he committed this wrong by declaring them weak reached approximately 60; some are also found in al-Sahih, such as hadiths 68, 116, 123, and 127, according to the numbering of his al-Da'ifah. Among them is the hadith on asceticism (no. 20), whose routes and corroborating reports he deliberately overlooked, though he even referred readers to al-Sahihah concerning them! A refutation of his imitator has already preceded in the introduction (pp. 13–17), so you must refer to it. A detailed exposition demonstrating the unsoundness of all his statements in declaring these hadiths weak would require a separate book, and my time does not permit that. Perhaps some of our brothers who are strong in this field—such as Ali al-Halabi, Samir al-Zuhayri, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, and others—will undertake it. May Allah reward them