, then he looks at its sinew bindings, but nothing is found on them; then he looks at its shaft—that is, its wooden body—but nothing is found on it; then he looks at its feathers, but nothing is found on them. It has passed through too swiftly for dung or blood to cling to it.’” He then related the rest of the hadith.

The root of these people’s misguidance is their belief that the rightly guided leaders and the Muslim community have departed from justice and gone astray. This is the starting point of those who depart from the Sunnah, such as the Rāfida and others like them. They then regard what they consider injustice as unbelief, and attach to that unbelief rulings of their own invention. These, then, are three stages followed by those who pass out of the religion, such as the Harūriyya, the Rāfida and others like them.

At each stage, they abandon some of the foundations of Islam, until they pass out of it as an arrow passes through its quarry. In the two Sahīhs, the hadith of Abū Saʿīd states:

“They kill the Muslims and leave the idolaters alone. If I live to encounter them, I will kill them as ʿĀd were killed.”

This also describes all the others who depart from the Sunnah, such as the Rāfida and those like them. They regard the blood of those who face the qiblah as lawful to shed, believing them to be apostates, more readily than they regard the blood of unbelievers who are not apostates as lawful to shed, because an apostate is worse than other unbelievers.

In another hadith, Abū Saʿīd reports that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, mentioned people who would arise within his community:

“They will emerge amid division among the people. Their distinguishing mark will be shaved heads.”

He said:

“They are the worst of creation—or among the worst of creation. They will be killed by whichever of the two factions is closer to the truth.”

This mark characterized the earliest of them, as in the case of Dhū al-Thudayya, for this is a characteristic inseparable from them.