Allah had put veils over their hearts not to perceive and...

Allah had put veils over their hearts not to perceive and heaviness into the ears not to hear. They did not believe in the verses they narrated from the Prophet (S). They disputed with the Prophet (S) about these verses and said stubbornly that these verses were not but myths of the ancient people.[^1] The three verses were common and connected in talking about the same subject; the doings of some of the polytheists, but the fabricators came and distorted the middle verse from among the three.

At-Tabari and others mentioned a tradition narrated by Sufyan ath-Thawri from Habeeb bin Abu Thabit from someone, who heard ibn Abbas saying that this verse was revealed to the Prophet (S) concerning Abu Talib; he prohibited from harming the Prophet (S) but he refused to be a Muslim.[^2] We put our notes about this tradition as the following: a. We found among the series of the narrators of this tradition Sufyan ath-Thawri.

He concealed the defects of the traditions of the unreliable narrators, wrote down traditions from the liars[^3] and narrated traditions from the unreliable narrators.[^4] Ibn Mubarak said, “Sufyan narrated a tradition. I came and found that he was changing something of it.

When he saw me, he felt shy and said: fiWe narrate it from you.”[^5] Ibn Mo’een said: “The mursal[^6] traditions of Sufyan are like the wind.”[^7] It was mention in Tathkiratul Huffadh from ath-Thahabi that al-Faryani had said: “I heard Sufyan saying: If we wanted to tell you of the traditions as we had heard, we wouldn’t tell you even of one tradition.” ^8 Sufyan narrated traditions from as-Salt bin Dinar al-Azdi.

As-Salt was one of those, who criticized and defamed Imam Ali (as) and the scholars of jarh and ta’deel[^9] criticized him. In spite of that, Sufyan narrated traditions from him but he did not mention his name.

He said, when narrating from him, Abu Shu’ayb told us… until Shu’ba said: “If Sufyan narrates a tradition from someone that you don’t know, don’t accept from him because he narrates traditions from persons like Abu Shu’ayb the mad.”[^10] There were some people, who considered Sufyan as one of the Shia. We found ourselves between two contradictories; ascribing Sufyan to the Shia and the truthfulness of this tradition of him!

They were two contradictories that would never meet; Shiism and considering Abu Talib as unbeliever where Ahlul Bayt (S) and all the Shia agreed upon the faithfulness of Abu Talib. So did every fair prudent person.