believe in their “Awaited One” is, in their eyes, a disbeliever (1)! This Awaited One, they claim, is a mere child (2)—two, three, or at most five years old—who slipped into a sirdāb (underground cellar) in Sāmarrā more than four hundred years ago. They assert that he knows everything and that he is Allah’s proof against the people of the earth; hence, whoever does not believe in him is, to them, a disbeliever. In reality he is nothing but a fiction; such a being has never existed. They further maintain that anyone who says Allah will be seen in the Hereafter is a disbeliever; anyone who says Allah truly spoke the Qur’an is a disbeliever; anyone who says Allah is above the heavens is a disbeliever; and anyone who affirms divine decree—saying that Allah guides whom He wills and misguides whom He wills, that He turns the hearts of His servants, and that He is the Creator of everything—is, in their reckoning, a disbeliever. Likewise, whoever accepts the genuine meanings of Allah’s names and attributes as He has stated in His Book and on the tongue of His Messenger is, for them, a disbeliever.
Such is the creed their leaders instill in them—men like the clan of al-ʿUd. These are the elders of the mountain folk; they were the ones who ordered them to fight the Muslims and issued such rulings. A number of their books, authored by Ibn al-ʿUd (3), have now fallen into Muslim hands.