I think you know the Prophet’s firm stance—may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him—when the sanctities of Allah were violated, and that gentleness and severity each have their proper place, as established by the Quran and the sunnah. You certainly know the poet’s words:

To place generosity where the sword belongs, in lofty matters, is as harmful as placing the sword where generosity belongs.

But where was this principle when you wrote a special treatise refuting those who adhere to the sunnah, which you entitled, “A Discussion of the ‘Albāniyyūn’…”—thus calling them by a name other than their own? If this is the title, what must the book itself be like? You filled it with insinuations and disparagement, revealing the great measure of courtesy and gentleness that you conceal within yourself! Yet all of this is insignificant beside your war against the sunnah of aligning feet and shoulders in the prayer row, your allowing prayer between columns without necessity, and your weakening of three authentic hadiths through your own peculiar and devious methods—as will be explained, Allah willing, in Addendum no. 13.

Third: He found fault with me on three matters, giving readers the impression that I had wronged him in them, though none of this is so, praise be to Allah:

1. He denied what I had attributed to him: that he had clung to the argument of discontinuity in imitation of Ibn Hazm. He said:

“I did not address Ibn Hazm’s argument, nor did I mention Ibn Hazm…”

I say: This is part of the evasion with which I described him earlier. For what I attributed to him was the discontinuity, not the argument itself; Ibn Hazm’s argument consists of two matters: discontinuity and the narrator’s uncertainty concerning the name of the hadith’s Companion narrator—whether he was Abu Amir or Abu Malik al-Ashʿari. Thus, he did not address this argument, but he did address the discontinuity at the beginning of his discussion of the hadith in