Alī—may Allah be pleased with them both—. He remained as caliph for six months, then relinquished authority to Muāwiya, thereby fulfilling the authentic report from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that he said:

“This son of mine is a leader, and through him Allah will reconcile two great groups of Muslims.” (1)

Muāwiya remained in power thereafter for twenty years and died in 60 AH.

Further evidence of the falsity of this Rāfidī’s claim is that no member of Quraysh delayed embracing Islam until so late a date. In 9 AH, more than a year after the Conquest, the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—sent Abū Bakr to lead the Hajj and to have it proclaimed that, after that year, no polytheist was to perform Hajj and no naked person was to circumambulate the House. That same year, the treaties with the polytheists were renounced and they were granted four months’ respite. That period expired in 10 AH, and thus every polytheist from all the Arab tribes had been granted general safe-conduct. In 9 AH, the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—also undertook the expedition of Tabūk to fight the Christians in Syria, by which time Islam had prevailed throughout Arabia.

Even if Muāwiya had committed any sins whatsoever, Islam would have effaced all that preceded it. How much more so when no sin is known of him on account of which he would have fled or his blood been declared forfeit! The authorities on prophetic biography and military campaigns unanimously agree that Muāwiya was not among those whose blood was declared forfeit in the year of the Conquest. The works on the Prophet’s campaigns by Urwa ibn al-Zubayr, al-Zuhrī, Mūsā ibn Uqba, Ibn Ishāq, al-Wāqidī, Saīd ibn Yahyā al-Umawī, Muhammad ibn Āidh (2), Abū Ishāq al-Fazārī, and others—as well as all the books of tafsīr and hadith—attest the contrary of what he asserted and mention