but is rather dispersed among them. They therefore search for it and follow whichever of them possesses it. This is what they did here: they set aside al-Bukhari’s weakening and relied upon the statements of those who deemed him trustworthy, as mentioned above.

I would add here that al-Dhahabi said in Dīwān al-Ḍuʿafāʾ (manuscript): “Harb ibn Maymun Abu al-Khattab: trustworthy. Sulayman ibn Harb accused him of lying.” In al-Mughnī (1/153, Aleppo edition), he said: “Trustworthy. Those who criticized him were mistaken; he is truthful.” Thus, as you see, he gave no weight to the one who accused him of lying, let alone to those who merely criticized him.

This man has a long story that contains a lesson for anyone who will take heed. There is no room to relate it here, but it is necessary to allude to it as briefly as possible. For about a quarter of a century, he was the leader of our Salafi brothers in Aleppo. A few years ago, he began to display a degree of harshness toward them and to impose his own opinion: whoever submitted to him, he drew close; whoever differed with him in opinion, he distanced himself from and refused to cooperate with—even if he had been his longtime companion from the very beginning of the daʿwah there.

He acted in this manner despite possessing no knowledge worth mentioning, nor any capacity for independent investigation beyond what he had acquired from others. Eventually, he advanced an opinion unfamiliar to them: that the wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were immune from fornication. Although all of them agreed with him that they died chaste and honorable, he would accept nothing less than their affirming with him that they were infallible in the religiously defined sense. When they demanded proof from him, and the one among them most learned in fiqh and understanding debated the matter with him, his response was to cut him off and shun him. He threatened him with the Fire if he persisted in his disagreement, and he tried to exclude him from the group after declaring that he was unwilling to cooperate with him.

In doing so, he brought harm upon himself and his daʿwah, for the group there came to realize that his conduct was not in accordance with the proper methodology. Despite my advising him, he did not respond. Consequently, they stripped him of