was grossly mistaken: he coupled Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi with Muslim, and also added al-Bukhari’s Book of Divine Oneness. By this he was referring to Abu al-Ahwas’s narration, which reports the Prophet’s command, peace and blessings be upon him, as explained above under “Fourth.”

This eminent shaykh falls into such errors in citing sources because he lacks practical grounding in this discipline and fails to note the distinction between a statement and an action, although this distinction is essential from the juristic perspective, as scholars well know. He and the first person mentioned have made very many such errors in their source citations for the hadiths of al-Adab al-Mufrad, as you will see pointed out in my new book, Sahih al-Adab al-Mufrad, which I hope to complete soon, by Allah’s permission. I subsequently completed it, and it was printed and published together with its counterpart, Da'if al-Adab al-Mufrad. All praise is due to Allah for granting success.

The third was “a group of scholars under the supervision of Zuhayr Shawish”! Thus it was stated on the opening page of the first edition, in its new arrangement, of Riyad al-Salihin, which I had previously critically edited and which he published in 1979–1399 as a first edition, then reissued in a second edition in 1404 and a third in 1406. Then, this year, 1412, he proceeded to print it in the new arrangement and prefaced it with an introduction full of lies, falsehood, and distortion of the facts—matters for which there is no room to provide evidence now. Readers need only consider, as proof, his claim that it was “critically edited by a group of scholars.” Now consider the following example:

This “group of scholars” commented on this hadith. Al-Nawawi, in citing its sources—no. 817 in the first edition, which I edited, and no. 818 in the edition “critically edited by a group of scholars”—said: “Al-Bukhari narrated it with this wording in the Book of Etiquette in his Sahih.” The group commented on it as follows (p. 337):