Documents of the Right Word

elated to this faqîr, (’Uthmân Efendi means himself): “During my
governorship of Baghdâd I observed how Jewish priests published
hundreds of thousands of books for the purpose of disseminating
their heresies and circulated them in a clandestine way in the
villages of Iran and Iraq. I had the books collected and thrown into
a river. I prevented them from writing and publishing such
mischievous books.” Despite so many efforts to prevent them, it
has not been quite possible to stop these base-natured people
causing turmoil and misdirecting people. So far, they have not
hesitated to sacrifice their property and lives for this purpose.
[People who are Muslims in name and yet enemies of Islam in
reality are called zindiqs. One of the harmful books, and probably
the worst, which zindiqs have written with all sorts of lies and are
trying to give universal currency to, is a pamphlet titled Husniyya.
Originally written in the Persian language, the book has been
translated into Turkish and circulated in a surreptitious way in
Istanbul and almost all over Anatolia. When a lithographic copy of
the book was obtained and scanned, it was seen that it did not
contain any true writings. It was understood that it was a spurious,
mendacious pamphlet fabricated with preposterous, impracticable,
illusory ideas. It is observed with consternation that this writing,
circulating among the Hurûfî fathers in Iran, was printed in
Istanbul in 1958 and has been being sold freely and contaminating,
misleading some wretched people who happen to read it. We have
seen with gratitude on the other hand that our noble and pure
people avoid buying this pamphlet, so that it does not sell much.
It is an obvious fact that those pure Muslims belonging to the
group of Ahl as-sunnat wa-l-jamâ’at and people with average
mental capacity and a smattering of general knowledge will not
believe such writings; yet falsifications disguised in good, true
statements and covered under ornamented, falsely-adorned
writings may confuse the readers. The introductory section of the
so-called book has been decked deceitfully].
According to the Ahl as-sunna, it is necessary to love very much
the Ahl-i-Bayt-i-Nebevî, that is, hadrat Alî and his children ‘radiy-
Allâhu anhum ajma’în’. Loving them will cause one to die in îmân
(to die as a Believer). Books written by the savants of Ahl as-sunna
teem with writings commending their love. The Iranian Jew named
Murtadâ, the author of the so-called book Husniyya, must have
known this fact very well; it was shrewd of him to write in the
beginning about his exuberant love for the Ahl-i-Bayt so that the
ignorant people reading these falsely adorned statements should
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