[Refutation of the second premise in the Rāfidī’s argument—namely, their claim that if an infallible person is indispensable, no one other than Alī is infallible]

As for the second premise (1): even if it were assumed that an infallible person is indispensable, their claim that, by consensus, no one other than Alī is infallible is untenable. Indeed, many people among their devout worshippers, Sufis, soldiers (2), and common folk believe that many of their shaykhs possess a kind of infallibility similar to what the Rāfidīs believe concerning the Twelve Imams. They sometimes express this by saying:

“The shaykh is divinely protected.”

If they believe this concerning their shaykhs, while also believing that the Companions are superior to them, then they have all the more reason to believe it concerning the caliphs among the Companions.

Many (3) among them also go to excess regarding their shaykhs in a manner akin to the Shia’s excess regarding the imams.

Moreover, the Ismāʿīlīs believe in the infallibility of their imams, who are not the Twelve Imams.

Furthermore, many—if not most—of the Umayyad adherents believed that the imam would be subject to neither reckoning nor punishment, and that Allah would not hold them accountable for anything in which they obeyed the imam. Rather, they maintained that they were required to obey the imam in everything and that Allah had commanded them to do so. Their statements concerning this are numerous and well known.

Yazīd ibn Abd al-Malik once wished to follow the example of Umar ibn Abd al-Azīz. A group of their shaykhs therefore came to him and swore by Allah, besides whom there is no deity, that whenever Allah appointed an imam over the people, Allah accepted his (4) good deeds and overlooked his evil deeds (5).