'Ali answers him: You are seriously mistaken and reversed the measure!

'Ali answers him: You are seriously mistaken and reversed the measure! Truth and false hood are not measured by the worth of persons. Firstly find out what is truth and which is falsehood, then you will see who stands by truth and who with falsehood. What 'Ali means to say is that you have reversed the measure. Truth and falsity are not measured by the nobility or baseness of persons.

Instead of regarding truth and falsehood as the measure of nobility and meanness, you prejudge persons by your own pre-conceived notions of nobility and meanness. Reverse your approach. First of all find out the truth itself, then you will be able to recognize who are truthful. Find out what is falsehood, and then you will identify those who are wrong. lt is not significant which person stands by truth and which sides with falsehood.

After quoting 'Ali's above-mentioned reply, Taha Husayn says: After the Revelation and the Word of God, I have never seen a more glorious and admirably expressed view than this reply of 'Ali. Shakib Arsalan, nicknamed "amir al-bayan" (the master of speech), is another celebrated contemporary writer.

Once in a gathering held in his honour, in Egypt, one of the speakers mounted the rostrum and in the course of his address remarked: "There are two individuals in the history of Islam who can truly be named amir al-bayan: one of them is 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and the other is Shakib." At which Shakib Arsalan (1871-1946), irritated, left his seat and walked to the rostrum. Deploring the comparison his friend had made between 'Ali and himself, he said: "What comparison is there between 'Ali and me!

I am not worth even the strap of 'Ali's sandals!" [^28] Michael Na'imah, a contemporary Lebanese Christian writer, in the introduction to the book al-Imam 'Ali by George Jurdaq, also a Lebanese Christian, writes: 'Ali was not only a champion on the battlefield but was also a hero in all other fields: in sincerity of heart, in purity of conscience, in the spellbinding magic of speech, in true humanitarianism, in the finnness and warmth of faith, in the height of tranquility, in readiness to help the oppressed and the wronged, and in total submission to truth wherever it may lie and whichever form it assumes.

He was a hero in all these fields. I do not intend to quote more from those who paid tributes to 'Ali, for the above-quoted remarks are sufficient to prove my point.