He did not spend it on the interests of the Muslims...

He did not spend it on the interests of the Muslims; rather he bought by it the consciences and the religions to clear the way for him to win the supreme authority and to control the Muslims. Mu’awiya sent cruel tax collectors to take taxes from the Muslim peoples in the countries he had occupied, and they unjustly took the Muslims’ properties to the extent that they went too far in exhausting them and forcing them to pay taxes.

He also imposed on them taxes Islam had not legislated such as al-Nawruz[^1] gifts. So his treasuries were full of properties, and he freely spent them on fighting Imam al-Hasan, the Prophet’s darling grandson, and overcoming him. As for the Prophet’s grandson (al-Hasan), he came to know that Mu’awiya, Hind’s son, became powerful. He thought that he would not be able to fight against him, that he would win no victory over him, and that the attitude required peacemaking, not war and fighting.

He was sure that war would bring about to the community bad complications whose dangers none knew except Allah. [^1] Al-Nawruz is the Persian New Year’s Day. The Assassination of Imam Ali Among the factors that urged Imam al-Hasan to make peace with Mu’awiya is the murder of his father through which he was terrified.

This left in his soul permanent sadness and strong sorrow, because Imam Ali was killed not for money he had taken nor for a sunna he had changed nor for a right with which he had singled himself out excluding them. Rather throughout his reign he led a life of the poor and the weak. In the meantime he spared no effort to make the community lead a life full of boons and blessings. He did his best to establish justice, deaden tyranny, support the oppressed, and to relieve the weak and the deprived.

However the people denied this shining justice and deliberately assassinated him at the time when he was before Allah. They paid no attention to his sacredness and to that of Allah’s Apostle (a.s). They committed this abominable crime, so Imam al-Hasan (a.s) thought that it was difficult for him to set them right or to return them to the way of the truth and rightness. He turned away from undertaking the authority over them and refrained from meeting with them.

He wished that he had not known them just as his father had wished before.