Despite all this, when some (1) of those in authority consulted me about waging war against them, I wrote a detailed response concerning such a campaign. We went to their region, and a group of them came to me. Discussions and negotiations took place between us that would take too long to describe. Then, when the Muslims conquered their land (2) and gained mastery over them, I forbade the Muslims to kill or take them captive (3). We settled them throughout the Muslim lands in scattered groups so that they could not assemble together.

What I mention in this book of (4) censure of the Rāfidah and exposure of their lies and ignorance is but a small portion of the great deal I know about them. They have also committed much evil whose details I do not know.

As for the author of this book and other members of the Rāfidah like him, we merely repay them in part for what they have done to the nation of Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—both its earlier and later generations. They deliberately attacked the finest people on earth, of the earlier and later generations after the prophets and messengers, and the finest members of a nation raised up for mankind. They portrayed them as the worst of mankind, fabricated monstrous accusations against them, and turned their good deeds into evil deeds (5).

Yet they turned to the worst of those among the people of deviant doctrines who profess Islam—namely, the Rāfidah in all its branches: the extremists, the Imāmīs, and the Zaydīs. Allah knows—and Allah suffices as Knower (6)—that among all the groups claiming affiliation with Islam, none beset by religious innovation and misguidance is worse than they are: none more ignorant, more mendacious, more unjust, closer to unbelief, wickedness, and disobedience, or farther removed from the true realities of