He was also asked—may Allah Most High have mercy on him:

What do the esteemed scholars, the imams of the religion—may Allah be pleased with them all and help them manifest the clear truth and suppress the factions of those who promote falsehood—say concerning the Nusayriyya, who maintain that wine is lawful, that souls transmigrate, and that the world has existed eternally; who deny resurrection, the raising of the dead, Paradise, and Hell beyond this worldly life; and who hold that “the five prayers” refer to five names: ʿAlī, Hasan, Husayn, Muhsin, and Fātima? In their view, uttering these five names suffices in place of the ritual bath required by sexual impurity, ablution, and the remaining conditions and obligations of the five prayers.

They also hold that “fasting” refers to the names of thirty men and thirty women whom they enumerate in their books, but there is insufficient space here to list them. They maintain that their god, who created the heavens and the earth, is ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib—may Allah be pleased with him. According to them, he is God in heaven and the imam on earth. In their view, the wisdom behind the manifestation of the divine nature in this human nature was to make himself familiar to his creatures and servants, teaching them how to know and worship him.

They further maintain that a Nusayrī does not become a believing Nusayrī with whom they will sit and drink wine, to whom they will reveal their secrets, and to whom they will marry their women, until his instructor addresses him. What they mean by this address is that they make him swear an oath to conceal his religion and acknowledge his shaykhs