Muslims also wrote well-known works exposing their secrets and stripping away their veils, for they knew how these people were corrupting both religion and worldly life. Among those who wrote against them were Judge Abd al-Jabbār, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-Tayyib, Abū Ya‘lā, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Aqīl, Abū Abd Allāh al-Shahrastānī, and many others.
These are the heretics who appeared throughout the East and West, Yemen, Syria, and various other places, such as the people of Alamut (1) and their like.
One of the principal means by which these people gained access to the Muslims (2) and corrupted the religion was the path of the Shi‘a, owing to their extreme ignorance, their caprices, and their remoteness from the religion of Islam.
They therefore instructed their missionaries to approach the Muslims through the gateway of Shiism. They began availing themselves (3) of the falsehoods and caprices found among the Shi‘a, while adding whatever further fabrications suited their purposes, until they did to the people of faith what the worshippers of idols and crosses had never done. Their true creed was the religion of Pharaoh, which is worse (4) than the creeds of the Jews, the Christians, and the worshippers (5) of idols.
Their call begins with Shiism and ends with casting off Islam—indeed, every religion. Anyone acquainted with the history of Islam and the many turns people have taken within it must know something of this.