“And you have known that the Sunnah has not been established concerning this!” Yet he is not truthful in what he says, for two reasons. First, he denied its mass transmission; thus Allah’s saying is true of one such as him: “They rejected them, though their souls were convinced of them.” Second is his statement, “You have known...,” for the soundness of a claim cannot be known without first presenting evidence and proof, as is self-evident. Yet he did none of that whatsoever, offering nothing but a mere assertion.

Such is the way of their scholar, whom some writers have alleged to be balanced and free of partisanship. By the truth, whoever among the people of caprice has been driven by partisanship to reject mass-transmitted reports—reports to which the scholars of hadith have given a degree of attention that the people of caprice cannot possibly match—is bound to be incapable of establishing proof for the soundness of their doctrine, in which they have departed from the people of Sunnah and hadith. This truth is unmistakable, so spare me the trifles.

Before laying down my pen, I say: al-Salimi has grown accustomed to making unrestrained assertions in support of his school and personal inclination. One example is that he coupled some Sunni scholars of the Zahiri school with the Shi‘ah and the Kharijites, saying (p. 178), adding to those mentioned: “And Abu Bakr ibn Dawud al-Zahiri.”

I say: this Abu Bakr was Muhammad ibn Dawud ibn ‘Ali al-Zahiri. The hadith master al-Dhahabi included his biography in Siyar (13/109), saying: “He transmitted from his father and from ‘Abbas al-Duri... He had complete insight into hadith and the views of the Companions, and he exercised independent judgment without blindly following anyone.”