SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) - Amir al-mu'minin also said:

Do not fight(1) the Kharijites after me, because one who seeks right but does not find it, is not like one who seeks wrong and finds it.

as-Sayyid ar-Radi says: Amir al-mu'minin means Mu`awiyah and his men.

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(1). The reason for stopping people from fighting the Kharijites was that Amir al-mu'minin was

clearly perceiving that after him authority and power would devolve on people who would be

ignorant of the proper occasion of jihad, and who will make use of sword only to maintain their

sway. And there were those who excelled even Kharijites in holding and calling Amir almu'minin

bad.

So those who are themselves in the wrong have no right to fight others in the wrong. Again,

those who are wilfully in the wrong can be allowed to fight those who are in the wrong by

mistake.

Thus, Amir al-mu'minin's words make this fact clear that the misguidance of Kharijites was not

wilful but under Satan's influence. They mistook wrong as right and stuck to it. On the other

hand, the position of misguidance of Mu`awiyah and his party was that they rejected right

realising it as right and appropriated wrong as the code of their conduct fully knowing that it

was wrong.

Their audacity in the matter of religion reached the stage that it can neither be regarded as a

result of misunderstanding nor can it be covered under the garb of error of judgement,

because they openly transgressed the limits of religion and paid no heed to the Prophet's

injunctions in comparison with their own view.

Thus, Ibn Abi'l-Hadid has written (vol. 5, p. 130) that when the Prophet's companion Abu'd-

Darda' saw utensils of gold and silver being used by Mu`awiyah he said he had heard the

Prophet saying, "One who drinks in vessels of gold and silver will feel flames of the fire of Hell

in his stomach" whereupon Mu`awiyah said, "As for me, l do not find any harm in it.

" Similarly, creating Ziyad ibn Abih's blood relationship with himself by his own opinion in total

disregard of the Prophet's injunction, abusing the descendants of the Prophet over the pulpit,

transgressing the limits of shari`ah, shedding blood of innocent persons and placing over

Muslims (as so called Khalifah) a vicious individual and thus opening the way to disbelief and

atheism are events that to attribute them to any misunderstanding is like wilfully closing eyes

to facts.