Documents of the Right Word

with water half of which is blood or urine.”
42- “It is permissible for a hungry person to kill another person
who has bread enough but will not give him any,” they say.
43- Their seventy-fifth stratagem, which is written in the second
chapter of the book, (Tuhfa) is their saying that “Prostration in
namâz must be done on earthen sun-dried bricks. Sunnites are like
devils because they do not do their prostrations on earth.”
44- It is stated as follows in the two hundred and ninety-ninth
page of the abridged version of Tuhfa: “As Christians forge
pictures of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ and hadrat Maryam (Mary) and
prostrate themselves in front of these pictures in churches, so
Hurûfîs draw or paint imaginary pictures of imâms and venerate,
and even prostrate themselves in front of, these pictures.” It is still
observed in Iran and Iraq today that they hang forged pictures of
bearded people wearing turbans on walls in mosques, in their
homes and shops and worship them, saying that they are pictures
of hadrat Alî.
45- It is stated in the fourteenth page of the abridged version of
Tuhfa that the most excessive groups of Hurûfîs say that hadrat Alî
is a god. These excessive groups have been broken into twentyfour
sub-groups. The twentieth group says that “God has entered
Alî and his children. Alî is a god.” People belonging to this group
are mostly in Damascus, Aleppo, and Lazkiyya. Votaries of this
group do not exist in Turkey.
The book Tuhfa-i-Isnâ-ashariyya gives a detailed account of
the Hurûfî beliefs explained shortly in the forty-five paragraphs
above, names of the books in which most of these beliefs are
recorded, and proves through corroboratory documents that each
and every one of these beliefs is wrong and aberrant. Alevîs, who
are aware of hadrat Alî’s honour and value and the services he
rendered to Islam, are Muslims who love that lion of Allah in a
manner advised by our master, the Prophet. On the other hand, we
Sunnite Muslims are Alevîs, too, because we love hadrat Alî in this
manner. We love other Alevîs who share this same love. We know
them as our brothers. It should be our debt of conscience to
cooperate and love one another on these lands, which offer us
freedom of worship and peace.
It has been explained in the lines above that one of the groups
of religion reformers who endeavour to demolish Islam from
within, and perhaps the most dangerous one, is the group called
Hurûfîs. These people are not Shiites. Being a Shiite means
– 255 –