—may Allah diminish their number—appeared, the very people about whom the Messenger of Allah ﷺ warned us: do not sit with them, do not converse with them; he even forbade us to visit their sick or accompany their funerals. These individuals set upon the transmitted narrations, charging them with anthropomorphism, and then dealt with the reports by subjecting them to the dictates of their own analogies. They branded the early generations as disbelievers, denounced the Companions, and rejected the rightly guided Imams. Thus they went astray themselves and led others away from the straight path.