from their peers—unlike the two al-Askarīs and others like them (1), for no recognized scholars acquired any knowledge from them. Yet they seek to make whatever any one of these men said into the very words of the Messenger whom Allah sent to all creation, placing it on the same footing as the Quran and the mass-transmitted reports of the Sunnah. No one would build his religion upon such a basis except a person exceedingly remote from the way of those endowed with knowledge and faith.

[The Rāfidah’s Claim That Their Consensus Is the Consensus of the Prophet’s Household and That the Consensus of the Prophet’s Household Is Infallible]

They established a third principle: the consensus of the Rāfidah is the consensus of the Prophet’s Household, and the consensus of the Prophet’s Household is infallible. The first premise is certainly false, while the second is disputed. Thus, reports ascribed to those men—some true and some false—came, for them, to occupy the same status as the Quran, as the Sunnah heard directly from the Messenger, and as the consensus of the Muslim community in its own right.

Every rational person who knows the religion of Islam and properly grasps this would spit it out with greater revulsion than he would intensely briny water or bitter colocynth. This is especially true of anyone versed in the methods of scholars, particularly the approaches of hadith scholars and the indisputably authentic reports they possess from the infallible one who does not speak from his own desire. These scholars regard the Messenger whom Allah sent to creation as their infallible imam, and from him they take their religion. What he declared lawful is lawful; what he declared forbidden is forbidden; and the religion is what he prescribed. Every statement that contradicts his is rejected by them, even if its author is among the best and most learned Muslims and is rewarded for exercising his independent judgment in the matter.

Nevertheless, they never set anything whatsoever against the words of Allah and His Messenger—neither a report transmitted from anyone else nor an opinion held by anyone else.

All other scholars are merely intermediaries in conveying from him, whether the wording of his hadith or its meaning. Some conveyed the Quran and hadith they heard from him, while others