ready to accept it. Whoever construes (1) the verse as referring to lookouts and spies advances a weak interpretation for many reasons, the discussion of which lies outside our present scope.

Similarly, the followers of Musaylima used to claim that he shared the Prophet in obedience, and that whatever was taken from him should be accepted just as what is taken from the Prophet ﷺ is accepted.

‘Abd Allah ibn Ubayy would at times place his own political strategy and personal opinion ahead of what the Prophet brought; if people did not listen to him he grew angry, and his tribe grew angry on his behalf.

In the same way, the leader of the Khārijites—the assiduous worshipper whose forehead showed the mark of prostration—preferred his intellect and even outbid the Prophet concerning the division of wealth, alleging that the Prophet had not acted justly in that matter (2).

The extremist Rāfiḍīs also elevated their minds and opinions above what he conveyed, claiming that he was unjust when he ordered Abū Bakr to lead the people in prayer (3) while his cousin was present, and when he praised and extolled Abū Bakr and ‘Umar, thereby making it obligatory (4) for the community after him to entrust leadership to them rather than to his cousin.

The Jahmiyyah followed the same path: they preferred their intellects and judgments to what he brought, alleging that he had not been fair in his wording when he departed from the expressions they themselves use about Allah. Instead, they say, he employed phrases that plunged the Ummah into beliefs of anthropomorphism and corporealism, burdened it with the toil of interpretation, and cast it into internal dispute through those very expressions—whereas their own phraseology