May hamd be to Allâhu ta’âlâ! May salât
and salâm be to Rasûlullah! May benedictions be over each of his pure
Ahl-i-Bayt and his just and faithful As-hâb, champions of Islam!
Our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu alaihi wa sallam’ stated that his Umma
(Muslims) would break into seventy-three different groups, that seventy-two of
these groups would go to Hell, and that the remaining one group would not enter
Hell owing to the correct belief they would hold. Al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî, on the
other hand, informs in his book Mektûbât that the worst among these seventy-two groups are
those who traduce the As-hâb-i-kirâm. These people harbor a grudge against most
of our Prophet’s As-hâb ‘ridwânullâhi ta’âlâ alaihim ajma’în’, and
vituperate them. What these people are, when and how they appeared, what
methods they have followed, and the harms they have done to Islam are
explicated in this book of ours.
These sacrilegious people, who set brothers against one another
and provoked a number of bloodbaths in the Islamic history, culminated in their
gruesome atrocities from time to time, only to be intercepted just in time by
the Islamic Sultâns such as Timûr Khân (Tamerlane) and Yavuz Sultân Selîm Khân,
who inflicted on them such punitive blows that they never regained their energy
to go on with their malignant activities. Nevertheless, “Water may sleep, but
the enemy never will. Therefore, always keep an eye on your enemy.” For many
centuries, we have been doing our worships peacefully in this blessed country
of ours (Turkey), yet in recent years it has been seen that these people have
appeared in different new appellations here and there, making speeches and
writing books. They have been striving to mislead the people and
surreptitiously spoil the entirely pure belief of the younger generation. They have
been perpetrating separatist activities. They have been sowing discord among
the people. Our religion, however, commands us to love one another and to be
kind to all people.
Of all the books and newspapers sent to us by our
brothers in Islam, two were the most consternating. Their contents were the
disgusting calumniations and lies fabricated by people called Hurûfî,
who are, in actual fact, the
followers of a Jewish convert of Yemen named Abdullah bin Saba’. We shuddered
as we read them. The thought that Muslims, especially our young and callow
children, might hear these profane slanders, their pure hearts might be
blemished and their true belief might be shocked, compelled us to spend many a
sleepless night. Therefore we decided to disclose their harmful writings,
confuting them one by one by means of powerful and authentic documents which we
borrowed from most valuable books. The result was a book of forty-four
paragraphs. We strongly hope that upon reading this book of ours, wise,
reasonable and discreet youngsters will follow the sacred advice emanating from
their conscience and thus will not believe these separatists. People who had
fallen for the subversive and destructive allegations of Abdullah bin Saba’ had
been gradually decreasing in number, when an Iranian heretic named Fadlullah,
adding some more blasphemous elements to his sacrilege and giving it the name
Hurûfî sect, began to spread it again, and this new catastrophic trend was
supported by Shâh Ismâ’îl Safawî. Fortunately, Sunnite and Shiite Muslims would
not be taken in by them.
May Allâhu ta’âlâ keep us true to the belief taught by scholars of Ahl as-Sunna ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ alaihim ajma’în’ and steady in the lightsome way guided by these superior people! May He protect us from falling for the lies and slanders of those nescient people who exploit our sacred religion as a means for their worldy advantages! May He bestow on us the fortune of loving one another, working together in the way shown by our religion and laws, and thus living in peace and comfort and in mutual brotherhood in this blessed country of ours! Âmin.