The creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah is that they do not pronounce takfīr on the people who face the qiblah merely because of sins, nor merely because of a mistaken interpretation. When an individual possesses both virtues and faults, his affair is left to Allah, Exalted be He.
What we have just stated is the point upon which everyone is agreed concerning his killing—may Allah be pleased with him.
Additional details have been transmitted; some are sound, some weak, and some fabricated outright.
The hadith specialists who authored works on this topic—al-Baghawī, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā and others—just like the hadith compilers in every other field of transmitted material, are, by unanimous scholarly consensus, the most knowledgeable and the most reliable authorities on the matter. They either trace what they report back through trustworthy transmitters, or relate it mursal from someone whose mursal narration is close to being sound. The chroniclers, by contrast, often cite reports whose chains include a liar or an unknown narrator; and when they dispense with isnād altogether, their accounts become layers of darkness piled one upon another. Indeed—by my life—such people quote from others whether they provide a chain or not.
As for the sectarian partisans and their ilk, they rely on reports that have no known originator at all—neither reliable nor weak. Outright fabrication is the least of their concerns. Even the most learned among them never bases what he transmits on an authoritative source; he contents himself with what he has heard from the unknown and the mendacious, and with narratives from people notorious for blatant falsehood.
It has therefore become clear that the story claiming the head was taken to Yazīd and that he prodded it with a stick is a falsehood. The head was taken to Ibn Ziyād, and he was the one who struck it with the cane; no known chain of transmission reports that the head was brought before Yazīd. I have found only a broken chain on this point, and it is contradicted by stronger and more explicit reports stating that, when the news of Ḥusayn’s death reached Yazīd, he showed sorrow over it.(1)