At most, it may be supposed that this ruling was unknown to them. How, then, can someone to whom part of the religion was unknown be like the Jews and Christians?!

The purpose here is not to discuss declaring people unbelievers, but rather to point out that these hadiths are necessarily known to be lies against the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that they contradict the religion of Islam, that they entail declaring Alī and those who opposed him unbelievers, and that no one who believes in Allah and the Last Day could have uttered them, much less could they be the words of the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Indeed, to ascribe them—Allah forbid—to the Messenger of Allah is among the gravest ways of maligning and attacking him. There is no doubt that this is the deed of a godless heretic, undertaken with the aim(1) of corrupting the religion of Islam. May Allah curse whoever fabricated them. What the Messenger promised him is sufficient, for he said:

“Whoever deliberately lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire.”(2)

[The Rāfidī’s claim that hadiths must be accepted and that departing from them is forbidden]

Chapter

The Rāfidī(3) said:

“The Imāmīs said: If we see an opponent citing hadiths such as(4) these, while we ourselves transmit many times as many through our trustworthy narrators, then we must accept them and are forbidden to depart from them.”

The response is as follows:

There is no doubt that those men of yours whom you have deemed trustworthy can, at most, be of the same kind as those from among the majority who narrate these hadiths. Thus, if the scholars