Among them are those who sinned...

Among them are those who sinned, those who turned atheists and whose views are uglier and more dangerous than those of the latter group. The circle of atheists includes the hypocrites and those who worshipped Allah only marginally. And among them were the disbelievers who never repented, as well as those who reneged after having embraced the Islamic creed.

This means that the Shi`as, who constitute a great portion of the Muslim population, place all Muslims in one balance without differentiating between a sahabi , a tabi`i , or anyone else. To be a sahabi is not to have immunity against wrong beliefs. It is upon this strong foundation that they allowed themselves, out of their own ijtihad , to criticize the sahaba and to research the extent of their equity.

They also permitted themselves to cast doubt about a number of sahaba who violated the conditions of such companionship and who deviated from the path of loving the Progeny of Muhammad. Why not? The greatest Messenger, after all, has said, “I am leaving among you that which, so long as you adhere to them both, you shall never stray: the Book of Allah and my `itra , my Progeny.

They shall never part from one another till they rejoin me at the Pool [of Kawthar]; so, see how you succeed me in faring with them.” Upon this and similar hadith , they find many sahaba as having violated this hadith by oppressing Muhammad's Progeny, and by cursing some members of such Progeny; so, how can the honor of companionship be sound for such violators, and how can they be branded as equitable?

This is the summary of the view held by Shi`as in rejecting the equity of some sahaba , and these are the factual scholarly proofs whereupon they built their arguments. Dr. Hamid Hafni Dawood admits somewhere else that to criticize the sahaba and to find fault with them is not a bid`a invented by the Shi`as alone. He goes further to say, “Since the beginning, the Mu`tazilites dealt with the same while discussing the issues relevant to the creed.

They did not only criticize the sahaba in general, they even criticized the caliphs themselves. In doing so, they won supporters and opponents.” The subject of criticizing the sahaba used to be confined, during the first centuries, to those who were deeply immersed in knowledge, especially Mu`tazilite scholars who were preceded in going in such a direction by the heads of the Shi`as and by the leaders who were enthusiastically supporting the Progeny of Muhammad.