and taking their women captive.
The affair of Ibn al-ʿAlqamī and others like him with the caliph, and their affair in Aleppo with its ruler, are widely known.
Likewise, those familiar with the wars between the Muslims and the Christians along the Syrian coast know that the Rāfidah side with the Christians against the Muslims, and that they helped them seize the lands when the Tatars came. The conquest of Acre and other coastal towns grieved the Rāfidah. When the Muslims defeat the Christians and polytheists, this causes the Rāfidah bitter distress; when the polytheists and Christians defeat the Muslims, it is an occasion of celebration and joy for them.
Adherents of heresy and godlessness also joined the Rāfidah, including the “Nusayriyyah,” the “Ismāʿīliyyah,” and others like them among the godless “Qarāmitah” and others in Khurāsān, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. The Rāfidah are Jahmīs and Qadarīs. Their lying, religious innovations, and fabrications against Allah and His Messenger exceed those of the Kharijites who departed from the religion, whom the Commander of the Faithful, ʿAlī, and the other Companions fought at the command of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Indeed, their apostasy from the laws of the religion is greater than that of those who withheld zakah, whom Abū Bakr al-Siddīq and the Companions fought.
Among the gravest grounds on which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, condemned the Kharijites was his statement about them:
“They kill the people of Islam and leave the idolaters alone.”
This is reported in the two Sahīhs from Abū Saʿīd, who said:
“ʿAlī sent to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,