nor Yaghūth, Ya‘ūq, or Nasr.’”

“And they have led many astray.”

They explained: These were the names of righteous men among Noah’s people. When they died, people remained at their graves in devotion and then made statues of them. Al-Bukhārī recorded this in his Sahīh and elaborated on and explained it at the beginning of his book, in the accounts of the prophets and elsewhere.

For this reason, a group of polytheistic Sabian philosophers composed works in support of this polytheism. They joined the esoteric Qarmatians in defying Allah and His Messenger, leading many nations astray and turning them away from Allah’s religion. At the very least, their hallmark became leaving mosques unused and venerating shrines. For they venerate shrines, undertake pilgrimages to them, and engage in polytheistic practices involving them in ways that neither Allah nor His Messenger nor any of the leading religious scholars has commanded. Rather, Allah and His Messenger have forbidden His believing servants to do so.

As for the mosques that Allah has commanded to be raised and His name to be mentioned within, they lay waste to them. At times, they perform neither Friday prayers nor congregational prayers, relying on one of the branches of hypocrisy they have established as a principle: that prayer is valid only behind an infallible person, along with similar errors of theirs.

The first to introduce the doctrine of ‘Alī’s infallibility and his explicit designation for the caliphate was the leader of these hypocrites, “‘Abd Allāh ibn Saba’,” who had been a Jew, then professed Islam outwardly, intending to corrupt the religion of Islam just as Paul corrupted the religion of the Christians. The Commander of the Faithful, ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib, intended to kill this man after learning that he was reviling Abū Bakr and ‘Umar, until the man fled from him.