He replied, “My son, do you not know?” “No,” he answered. “Abū Bakr,” his father said. “Then who?” he asked. “‘Umar,” he replied. Al-Tirmidhī and others relate that ‘Alī narrated this ranking in merit from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

The point here is that lies of various kinds have been fabricated about ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib—things that could not rightly be attributed even to the least of the believers. Indeed, the Qarmatians, Bātiniyyah, Khurramiyyah, Mazdakites, Ismā‘īlīs, and Nusayrīs attributed their doctrines to him, although these are among the most corrupt doctrines in the world. They claimed that these belonged to the knowledge inherited from him.

All of this was introduced by hypocritical heretics who intended to display the beliefs of the believers while inwardly holding the opposite. They gained the allegiance of groups that had abandoned the revealed laws. They had states of their own, and the believers suffered tribulations at their hands. Ibn Sīnā even said, “I took up the philosophical sciences only because my father was an adherent of the Egyptian mission.” He meant the Banū ‘Ubayd, the Rāfidī Qarmatians, for they espoused these philosophical sciences.

Thus, you find connections and alliances between these people and the Rāfidīs and others like them in their remoteness from understanding prophethood. What unites them is utter ignorance of the straight path—the path of those whom Allah has blessed: the prophets, the steadfastly truthful, the martyrs, and the righteous.

If, then, within a period of less than seven hundred years, lies have been fabricated about his household, his Companions, and others, and doctrines of philosophers and astrologers have been attributed to them which are known