Wednesday 26 July 2017

Clarification Regarding the Foreword to the book The Etiquettes of the Scholar

A disappointment regarding the translation of Imam an-Nawawi's book 




We praise Allah, the book has now been published in Malaysia and I have received my complimentary copies.

For the most part, the publication looks excellent and meets expectations. However, a foreword has been added that I was never informed of let alone consulted on. I do not know who the author is and I cannot fathom why he was asked to write it. The problems can be summarised as follows:

1) The foreword has just about nothing to do with the subject matter of the book. The subject matter of the book is authority in Islam: where do we take our knowledge from, whom do we ask when we have a question, how do we identify an authority, and so forth. However, this foreword dicusses a cacophony of unrelated subjects (e.g. identity politics) and does not even hint at the topic of authority.

2) The foreword is littered with erroneous ideas and statements. From what I can tell, the author seems to be heavily influenced by the liberal/cultural Marxist/postmodernist worldview, and this has in turn infected and soiled his presentation of Islam as well as European/Anglosphere culture and civililisation. This means that the foreword is not only irrelevant, incoherent and useless, it is also highly misleading and fallacious. 

I therefore have to emphatically disavow this foreword and clearly state, for the record, that I bear absolutely no responsibility for it in any way, shape or form. I would never consent to a foreword like this being added to any of my publications.

And with Allah is every success.

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