“The apparent meaning of that is disbelief, so we reinterpret it or entrust it to Allah.” Thus, according to their position, the Book, the Sunnah, and the statements of the early generations and the imams contain nothing on this subject whose apparent meaning is not disbelief, and nothing on this subject that expresses faith. Yet the negation they claim to be the truth—which, according to them, every believer, or the select among the believers, must believe—was never uttered by any messenger, prophet, or heir to the prophets and messengers. What the prophets and their heirs did utter is not, according to them, the truth; rather, its apparent meaning contradicts the truth. Indeed, their most adept thinkers know that it contradicts the truth both outwardly and inwardly. Some of them, however, claim that the prophets could only address people in terms contrary to the inward truth, and therefore resorted to deception and falsehood for the benefit of the common people.

They should be asked: Why, then, did the prophets not disclose this inward truth to their intelligent and virtuous close followers, if what these people claim is true? It is well known that the messengers’ close followers likewise upheld affirmation, and that none of them ever expressed negation—unless someone falsely attributes it to one of them. One example is the statement attributed to ʿUmar:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and Abū Bakr would converse, while I was like a man of the Zanj between them.”

The scholars agree that this is fabricated. The same applies to what is related about ʿAlī and his household: that they possessed inward knowledge contrary to the outward knowledge held by the majority of the Muslim community. It is established in the authentic hadith collections and elsewhere, on the authority of ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him, that they possessed no secret from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that other people did not possess, nor any written document apart from what was on the sheet, which contained:

“Blood-money payments, the ransoming of captives, and the rule that a Muslim is not to be killed in retaliation for a disbeliever.”