Had it not been for Ali and the Imams from his offspring...

Had it not been for Ali and the Imams from his offspring, we would not have found today anything left of the Sunnah of the Prophet. We have also come to know that Ayesha did not act upon the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, nor did she have the least regard for it. Although she had heard numerous ahadith in praise of Ali, she denied them and acted to their contrary.

She defied the command of Allah, as well as the order of His Messenger which he had directed personally to her, so she came out to lead the infamous Battle of the Camel wherein sanctities were violated and innocent people were killed.

She betrayed her written pledge to Uthman ibn Haneef, and when they brought her his men tied up, she ordered them to be beheaded.[^187] Leave aside the fires of war and dissension which the mother of the faithful ignited, causing the land and those on it to be burned thereby, and let us discuss her own interpretations, and the following of her own views, in as far as Allah's creed is concerned.

If the view of the sahabi is taken for granted and his statement is held as an argument, what would you say about one from whom half the creed is supposedly derived?!

Al-Bukhari in his Sahih, in a chapter on praying qasr prayers, al-Zuhri quotes Urwah quoting Ayesha, may Allah be pleased with her, saying, "The first obligatory of the prayers are two rek`as, so the traveller's prayers were thus fixed, then the prayers of one who is not on a journey were to be prayed in full." Al-Zuhri said, "I asked Urwah, "Why is Ayesha then saying her prayers [while travelling] in full?" He said, "She is following the same interpretation as that made by Uthman."[^188] Are you not surprised how the mother of the faithful and wife of the Prophet abandoned the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, which she herself had narrated and to whose authenticity she testified, just to follow the bid`a of Uthman ibn Affan, whom she was encouraging people to kill, claiming that he altered the Sunnah of the Prophet and who wore it out before his own shirt was worn out?!

Yes, this is exactly what happened during Uthman's caliphate, but she changed her mind again during the reign of Mu`awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan. She urged people to kill Uthman, but once she came to know that they did kill him, and that they swore the oath of allegiance to Ali, she changed her mind and came out demanding revenge for him!