an arrow passes through its quarry. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—commanded that they be fought, and the Companions and Muslim scholars unanimously agreed that they must be fought. Reports concerning them have been authentically transmitted from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—through ten lines of transmission, all of which Muslim recorded [in his Sahih] (1). Al-Bukhari narrated three of them (2).

They are not people who deliberately lie. Rather, they are known for their truthfulness, to the extent that their hadiths are said to be among the most authentic. Yet they were ignorant and went astray in their innovation. Their innovation did not arise from heretical unbelief or atheism, but from ignorance and a misguided understanding of the meanings of the Quran.

As for the Rāfidah, their innovation originated in heretical unbelief and atheism, and deliberate lying is widespread among them (3). They themselves acknowledge this when they say, “Our religion is dissimulation,” meaning that a person says with his tongue the opposite of what is in his heart. This is precisely lying and hypocrisy. Yet they claim that they alone are the believers, to the exclusion of all other Muslims, while branding the first and foremost as apostates and hypocrites. In this respect, they are as the saying goes:

She accused me of her own malady, then slipped away—