Abbas, it concerns the murderer’s repentance, not the claim that he will remain in Hell forever. There are two reports from Ahmad concerning whether his repentance is accepted, as has been explained at length elsewhere. How can the two be compared?

Nor was there anyone among the Companions who said:

“Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman were not leaders, and their caliphates were not valid,”

or who said:

“Their caliphates were established by explicit designation,”

or who said:

“After Uthman was killed, anyone other than Ali was superior to him or had a greater right to the imamate.”

These, then, are the religious principles over which disagreement arose after the Companions. The Companions themselves neither voiced disagreement nor engaged in disputation over them—much less resorted to the sword. Nor did any of them fight over a principle concerning the imamate. Before Ali’s caliphate, therefore, there had been no fighting among them over the imamate; and during his rule (1), no one fought him on the grounds that such fighting would follow from that principle.

Those who fought Ali did not fight him because of any quality peculiar to Ali as opposed to the leaders before him. Rather, those who fought alongside him acknowledged the imamate of his predecessors, and it was widely held among them that Abu Bakr was superior to Ali. Indeed, it is established through mass transmission (2) from Ali himself that he used to say this from the pulpit. Nor were the early Shīa (3) known to rank Ali above Abu Bakr and Umar, much less to impugn the validity of their imamate.