any major difference in meaning between them. Both are addressed to a person: the first explicitly states that the one addressed is inside the madman, while the other implies this. What further confirms that the first wording is the more explicitly sound one is the hadith under discussion, which will, Allah willing, be decisive against the alleged impossibility—despite the preceding explanation that this is merely a claim concerning an unseen matter, one that contradicts the methodology mentioned earlier.

Before concluding my discussion of this issue, I must offer the noble readers at least one example of the ignorance of the sunnah with which I described the man above—although what has preceded is sufficient proof of it. He cited the well-known hadith prohibiting the following of the ways of the disbelievers in a wording that has no basis, either by transmission or by knowledge. He said (p. 27): “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, spoke the truth when he said: ‘You will certainly follow the nations before you, feather for feather, to such an extent that, if they entered a lizard’s hole, you would enter it after them.’ They asked, ‘The Jews and the Christians, O Messenger of Allah?’ He replied, ‘Who else?’ Or as he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said!”

The scope for criticizing his citation of the hadith in this manner is extremely broad. I only wish to criticize one word in it, by which he corrupted the hadith’s meaning: his use of hithā’a. This is a gross textual corruption of the hadith, one that would not escape anyone with even the slightest education. The correct reading is hadhwa. Nor is this a typographical error, as some may suppose, for he repeated it elsewhere. On p. 34, coupled with another error, he wrote: “Hithā’a al-qadhdhati bi’l-qadhdhati—feather for feather!” Thus he vocalized it with a fathah on the qaf, whereas it should have a dammah (1).