It was I who understood that if they got a footing everyone...

It was I who understood that if they got a footing everyone would be afflicted with their blight, that the world of Islam would become inflexible, adhering to the external aspects, superficial and fossilised, that Islam's back would become bent. Is it not this that the Prophet mentioned: Two groups will break my back - those who know but act recklessly, and those who are ignorant but profess piety.

'Ali wanted to say that if he had not fought against the Kharijite movement in the Islamic world, no other person would have come forward and dared to fight against them. Apart from him there was no-one who saw that those whose foreheads were calloused…