in the Muslim army during Ghāzān’s campaign in 599 AH, and Syria was left without an army of [the Muslims] (1), they ravaged the land and engaged in every kind of corruption: killing, seizing property, carrying the banner of the Cross, favoring Christians over Muslims, and transporting Muslim captives, wealth, and weapons to the belligerent Christians in Cyprus and elsewhere.

This and similar conduct was witnessed firsthand by people and was reported through recurrent transmission to those who did not witness it. Were I to recount all that I have heard and seen of its effects, this book would become too long. Others possess reports and details about it of which I am unaware.

Thus, their assistance to the unbelievers against the Muslims, and their preference that unbelief and its adherents prevail over Islam and its people, is a matter attested by eyewitnesses. Even if it were assumed that the Muslims were unjust and wicked and openly practiced forms of religious innovation graver than reviling Ali and Uthmān, a rational person would still consider which of two goods is better and which of two evils is worse.

Do you not see that although the people of the Sunnah say what they say about the Kharijites, the Rāfidis, and other people of religious innovation, they do not assist the unbelievers in advancing their religion, nor do they prefer the ascendancy of unbelief and its adherents to the ascendancy of an innovation less grave than that?

When the Rāfidis gain power, they exercise no restraint. Consider what occurred during the reign of Sultan Khudābanda (2), for whom this book was composed: what evil emerged from them! Had it continued and grown stronger, they would thereby have abolished most of the laws of Islam. Yet “they wish to extinguish Allah’s light with their mouths, but Allah refuses except to perfect His light, even though the unbelievers detest it.”