If they claim that none of the elite among the messengers’ companions could understand these realities, they place the first and foremost believers below later generations in knowledge and faith. This is one of the claims of the heretics, for it ranks certain ancient peoples—the Greeks, Indians, and others—as superior to this community in intellect and in their understanding of divine matters and matters of worship. Such are the claims of hypocritical heretics, since Muslims agree that this community is the best and most accomplished of all communities, and that its best and most accomplished members are its earliest believers.

Once this is conceded, those who know these earliest believers best and follow them most closely are the scholars of hadith and the adherents of the sunnah. Hence Imam Ahmad said in the epistle of ‘Abdūs ibn Mālik:

“The fundamental principles of the sunnah, according to us, are to hold firmly to the way of the companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, to follow their example, and to abandon religious innovations. Every religious innovation is misguidance. The sunnah, according to us, consists of the reports from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.”

The sunnah explains the Quran and provides evidence concerning it—that is, indications of its meaning.

For this reason, scholars have stated that the Rāfidī doctrine is the foundation of heresy, and that the first person to introduce it was a hypocritical heretic, ‘Abd Allāh ibn Saba’. For whoever impugns the first and foremost believers thereby impugns their transmission of the message, their understanding of it, or their adherence to it. The Rāfidīs sometimes impugn their knowledge of the message and sometimes their adherence to it—and attribute these instead to the Prophet’s household and to an infallible figure who has no existence whatsoever.

The heretics among the philosophers, the Nusayrīs, and others sometimes impugn the transmission of the message; this is