and in the early period, that view was reported only from the Rāfidīs, then from some Mu‘tazilīs, after which a group of later scholars agreed with them.
What is generally reported from the majority of scholars is that the prophets are not protected from being allowed to persist in minor sins, and that they are not allowed to persist in them. These scholars do not say that minor sins can never occur. Among the groups of this community, the first from whom unqualified protection from sin was reported, and its most emphatic proponents, were the Rāfidīs. They maintain that this protection extends even to matters arising from forgetfulness, inadvertence, or interpretation. They extend it to anyone they regard as an imam, and assert that ‘Alī and the Twelve are protected from sin.
Then the “Ismā‘īlīs,” who ruled Cairo and claimed to be caliphs descended from ‘Alī and Fātimah—though, according to the scholars, they were descendants of ‘Ubayd Allāh al-Qaddāh—and their followers asserted this same protection from sin for their imams and others like them. Yet they were as Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī described them in the book he wrote to refute them:
“Outwardly, their doctrine is Rāfidism; inwardly, it is pure unbelief.”
“Al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā” described their doctrines in his books, as did other Muslim scholars. These people and others like them are extremists who uphold protection from sin, and they may declare anyone who rejects it an unbeliever. These extremists are themselves unbelievers by the agreement of the Muslims. Thus, anyone who declares those who allow the possibility of prophets committing minor sins to be unbelievers resembles these Ismā‘īlīs, Nusayrīs, Rāfidīs, and Twelvers.
This is not the position of any of the followers of Abū Hanīfah, Mālik, or al-Shāfi‘ī, nor of the well-known speculative theologians who affiliate themselves with the Sunnah, such as the followers of