She replied, “He is a free man.”

He said, “You have spoken the truth. Had he been a slave, he would have feared his master.”

When the slave girl entered, her master said (1), while seated at a drunken feast (2), “What took you so long to return to us (3)?”

She replied, “A man said such-and-such to me.” Bishr then went out barefoot until he met our master Mūsā ibn Jafar, and he repented at his hands (4).

[Response to the Rāfidī’s Claim That the Imāmīs Derived Their Doctrine from the Prophet’s Household]

The response to this (5) may be given from several angles. The first is to say: We do not concede that the Imāmīs—whether the Twelvers or any others—derived their doctrine from (6) the Prophet’s Household. Rather, they oppose Ali—may Allah be pleased with him—and the Imams of the Prophet’s Household (7) in every foundational doctrine by which they departed from the people of the Sunnah and the Community: their doctrines of divine unity, divine justice, and Imamate. For what is reliably established from Ali—may Allah be pleased with him—(8) and the [Imams] of the Prophet’s Household (9)—namely, affirming Allah’s attributes, affirming divine decree, affirming the caliphate of the three caliphs, affirming the merits of Abu Bakr and Umar—may Allah be pleased with them both—and other such matters—all of it (10) contradicts