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Al-Dhahabi's Warning to Critics of Sufis
Al-Dhahabi warnings to those inclined to attack Sufis:

Our Shaykh Ibn Wahb [Ibn Daqiq al-`Id] said - may Allah have mercy on him: 'Among the predicaments that mar the discipline of narrator-discreditation are the divergences that take place between the followers of tasawwuf (al-mutasawwifa) and the people of external knowledge (ahl al-`ilm al-zahir); animosity therefore arose between these two groups and necessitated mutual criticism.'

Now this [animosity against Sufis] is a plunge from which none escapes unscathed except one thoroughly knowledgeable with all the evidentiary proofs of the Law. Note that I do not limit such knowledge to the branches [of the Law]. For, concerning many of the states described by the people of truth (al-muhiqqin) among the Sufis, right cannot be told from wrong on the mere basis of knowledge of the branches.
One must also possess firm knowledge of the principles of the Law and be able to tell apart the obligatory from the possible, as well as the rationally impossible from the customarily impossible.

It is, indeed, a position fraught with danger!
For the critic of a true Sufi (muhiqq al-sufiyya) enters into the hadith: "Whosoever shows enmity to one of My Friends, I shall declare war upon him."
While one that abandons all condemnation for what is clearly wrong in what he hears from some of them, abandons the commanding of good and the forbidding of evil.
Imam Al-Dhahabi, al-Muqiza (p. 88-90).