by the Messenger, and the fabrications they attribute to him, could never be hidden from anyone but a person steeped in ignorance and caprice.

Their leading scholars who write works for them include groups that know that much of what they say is false. Yet they continue writing for them in order to maintain their leadership over them.

People suspect the author of this book of precisely that. However, he wrote it for the sake of his followers. If one of them knows that what he says is false, yet publicly presents it and says, “It is the truth from Allah,” then he belongs to the same class as the Jewish scholars who “write the Scripture with their own hands and then say, ‘This is from Allah,’ in order to obtain a paltry price thereby. Woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn.” If, on the other hand, he believes it to be true, this demonstrates the utmost degree of his ignorance and misguidance.

If you do not know, that is a calamity;
But if you do know, the calamity is greater.

Their religion contains both rational and scriptural doctrines. In rational matters, their later scholars follow the Mu'tazilah, except for those among them (1) who have embraced philosophy. Such a person is either a philosopher or combines philosophy with Mu'tazilism; Rāfidism is then added to this—as with the author of this book and others like him. They thereby become some of the people furthest removed from Allah, His Messenger, and the unalloyed religion of the Muslims (2).

As for their scriptural doctrines, they rely chiefly on reports transmitted from certain members of the Prophet’s Household (3), such as Abū Ja'far al-Bāqir, Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq, and others.