If the jinns and mankind are to testify that he is Rafidi...

If the jinns and mankind are to testify that he is Rafidi, then why did he follow the sects which were established to oppose ?! Rather, he himself, like the others, invented a sect carrying his own name, abandoning the Imams of to whom he was a contemporary. Ahmad ibn Hanbal made the name of Ali the fourth in the list of the "righteous caliphs," after being rejected as such. He wrote a book recounting Ali's merits.

He became famous for having said, "Nobody among the sahaba, according to all authentic musnads, has as many virtues as Ali, may Allah be pleased with him..." Yet he himself invented an Islamic sect called "al-Hanbali" despite the testimony of his contemporary scholars that he was not a faqih at all.

Shaykh Abu Zuhra has said, "Many scholars of earlier times never counted Ahmad ibn Hanbal as a jurist; among them was Ibn Qutaybah, whose time was very close to that of Ahmad, and Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, and others."[^74] Then Ibn Taymiyyah came to lift the banner of the Hanbali sect.

He incorporated into it some new theories which, among other things, prohibited the visiting of graves or the building of structures over them, or the seeking of nearness to Allah through the Prophet and his ; all of the above constituted, according to him, shirk, polytheism. These are the four sects, and these are their imams and what they have said about the Purified Progeny of .

So, they either say what they do not do, which is a big abomination very much hated by Allah, or they may not have invented these sects at all but, rather, their own followers among the henchmen of the Umayyads and Abbasides were the ones who founded them with the help of oppressive rulers then attributed them to these imams after the latter's death. This you will come to know, Insha-Allah, in the next researches.

Are you not amazed about these imams who were contemporary to the Imams of guidance from , then they turned away from the latter's Straight Path and were not guided by their guidance, nor were they enlightened by their light, nor did they prefer their hadith which quotes their grandfather the Messenger of Allah ?

Rather, they preferred over them Ka`b al-Ahbar, a Jew, and Abu Hurayra the Dawsi about whom the Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib has said, "The person who told the worst lies about the Messenger of Allah is Abu Hurayra al-Dawsi"?! Hazrat Ayesha said the same about him.