in this—unless it be this al-Sabuni, for he has imitated him exactly. As mentioned above, he has claimed that his Abridgement contains only authentic hadiths! Yet he surpasses him in self-admiration and vanity, styling himself in his books as a professor of exegesis at the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at King Abdul Aziz University in Mecca. He also harbours the most intense hatred and the bitterest rancour toward the people of hadith and those who act upon it, who in some lands are called Salafis.

This is demonstrated by the pages he has filled in his booklet—also falsely entitled The Authentic Prophetic Guidance on the Tarawih Prayer. He wrote it for no purpose other than to refute the Salafis who, among other things, revived the Prophet’s sunnah of praying eleven units in the Tarawih prayer. If only it had been a scholarly refutation; then we would have said: “He has his own view and independent legal reasoning”—if indeed he has either a view or independent legal reasoning! But instead, Allah knows best, he made it a pretext for attacking them, venting his rage and quenching the resentment in his breast through abusing, insulting, and slandering them. Thus, he calls them “pseudo-Salafis” (p. 35), repeating this elsewhere (pp. 77 and 138); “the ignorant” (p. 75); people of “poor understanding and dull minds” (p. 80); “pretenders who presume to set themselves above the scholars”; and those who “declare the righteous Salaf misguided” (p. 89), repeating this accusation in more than one place; as well as “pretenders to knowledge” (p. 130)! There are other such expressions, all of which reveal to any intelligent person the rancour, envy, and suspicion of Muslims that this man harbours within himself.

Allah is his Reckoner. It is not my concern to respond to these words of his, for the matter is as Allah the Exalted has said: “Indeed, Allah defends those who believe.” Rather, I wish to make clear to people that he himself is the pretender to knowledge, lest they be deceived by him and by his writings, which overflow with compound ignorance—as you have seen above in what he did in his Abridgement.

Even clearer evidence, and more revealing of his disgrace and shame, is the fact that he embellished the first page of