those who fabricate the greatest number of reports about the Messenger are the Rāfiḍī Shīʿah—a fact plainly evident to anyone who examines their writings.

The second major category of lying is to lie to people, and this itself comprises two kinds.

1. A person may present himself as devout, righteous, and full of faith while in reality he is steeped in unbelief and tyranny—Allah’s refuge is sought. This is hypocrisy, the greater hypocrisy (al-nifāq al-akbar) about which Allah said: “Among the people are those who say, ‘We believe in Allah and in the Last Day,’ yet they are not believers” (Q 2:8). They utter the claim with their tongues, swearing oaths they know to be false. The proofs for this in the Quran and Sunnah are many. Hypocrites—people of falsehood—lie to others by professing faith while they are liars. Reflect on Allah’s words at the opening of Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn: “When the hypocrites come to you they say, ‘We bear witness that you are indeed the Messenger of Allah.’” Note how they reinforce this statement with three emphatic devices: the verb “we bear witness,” the particle “inna,” and the prefixed lām of emphasis—three layers of confirmation claiming that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Yet Allah responds: “Allah knows that you are truly His Messenger, and Allah testifies that the hypocrites are liars” (Q 63:1). Their declaration “We bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah” is therefore another form of lying—indeed the most severe kind of lying to people, for its perpetrator is a hypocrite.

2. The third type of lying is the ordinary falsehood exchanged in people’s conversations—someone says, “I told so-and-so such-and-such,” when in fact he did not