He said, ‘As for your claim that he removed the title “Commander of the Believers” from his name: the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, invited Quraysh at al-Hudaybiyyah to draw up an agreement between them and himself (1). He said, “Write: ‘This is what Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, has agreed (2) upon.’”

‘They replied, “By Allah, had we known that you were the Messenger of Allah, we would neither have prevented you from reaching the House nor fought you. Rather, write ‘Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh.’”

‘He said, “By Allah, I am indeed the Messenger of Allah, even though you deny me. Write, O ʿAlī: ‘Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh.’” Yet the Messenger of Allah (3) was superior to ʿAlī. Have I answered this objection?’

They replied, ‘By Allah, yes.’ Twenty thousand of them then returned, while four thousand remained and were killed.”

As for this Rāfidī and others like him declaring them disbelievers, and treating their return to obedience to ʿAlī as an acceptance of Islam on the basis of the Prophet’s alleged statement, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “O ʿAlī, your war is my war,” the response is this:

It is astonishing—and among the greatest calamities afflicting these forsaken people—that they establish such a momentous principle on the basis of a hadith like this, which is absent from every collection relied upon by hadith scholars. It appears neither in the collections of authentic hadith, nor in the Sunan, Musnad, or fawā’id collections, nor in any other works transmitted and circulated among scholars of hadith. Nor do they classify it as authentic, sound, or weak. Rather, it is baser (4) than that: it is among the most manifestly false fabrications. For it contradicts what is known through mass transmission from the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, namely, that he regarded the two groups as