appeared long after his death, in this era and the period surrounding it. Moreover, a bukht camel does not conceal its rider if he is naked. Had Allah willed to cover someone unjustly stripped naked, He would have covered him with something suitable, just as He covered Abraham, His intimate friend, when he was stripped and placed in the catapult.

Another indication of the manifest falsehood of this account is that Muslims have continually taken captives from among the unbelievers, both the People of the Book and others. Yet they have never been known to transport women stripped naked, with their bodies exposed. Rather, the most that would be visible of a captive woman was her face, her hands, or her foot.

Nor has it ever been known in Islam that any Muslim took a member of the Prophet’s household captive while knowing that the person belonged to that household. The only possible exception would be someone among the Muslims’ captives whose membership in the Prophet’s household was unknown—for example, a woman captured by the enemy and subsequently rescued by the Muslims. Once it became clear that she was originally free, they would release her. If, among such cases, there were an unknown person who concealed her lineage and deemed lawful with her what Allah had forbidden—a heretic and hypocrite—Allah knows best the truth of that. But nothing of this kind has ever occurred openly in Islam.

Among the claims made by these ignorant people is that al-Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf killed the noble descendants of the Prophet and sought to wipe them out entirely. This reflects ignorance of people’s circumstances. Although al-Hajjāj was a destroyer of lives and a shedder of blood who killed a great many people, he never killed any of the noble members of Banū Hāshim. Rather, his sovereign, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwān, forbade him to attack Banū Hāshim, who are those noble descendants. He stated that he had come to war when they attacked them—meaning when al-Husayn was killed.