Documents of the Right Word

As-hâb (companions) are to be taken into consideration; not the
statements of historians or the narratives written in Kash-shâf.
Neither the Emir’s name nor Mu’âwiya’s is mentioned in the
writings that you say have been derived from Kash-shâf. Nor is it
so much as hinted that those two great personages of Islam
exchanged maledictions. The writings (in the book mentioned)
are entirely true. There is nothing running counter to our
knowledge. Why, then, should we search for an agreeable
meaning? Yes, the Khalîfas of Benî Umayya had the Ahl-i-Bayt
cursed throughout the (religious sermons given on the) menbers
(in mosques) for many years. ’Umar bin Abd-ul-Azîz put an end
to this practice. May Allâhu ta’âlâ give him plenty of rewards! Yet
Mu’âwiya, one of the Umayyad Khalîfas as he was, is an exempt.
Cursing or vituperating Mu’âwiya ‘radiy-Allâhu anh’ would mean
cursing or vituperating a considerable number of the As-hâb-ikirâm
who joined these controversies and wars with him, and
among them were a few of the Ashara-i-mubash-shara [the ten
people who were given the good news while they were still living
that they would go to Paradise after death]. And speaking ill of
these great religious authorities would in its turn mean rejecting
and vitiating the religious information coming to us from them.
No Muslim would see this appropriate or agreeable.
Sir! I will explain to you the two madh-habs in this matter. The
word of the Ahl as-sunnat wa-l-jamâ’at, and the word of others.
Some people speak ill of the three Khalîfas and Muâwiya and
those who followed him. They curse them. They say that after our
Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu alaihi wa sallam’ all the As-hâb became
renegades, with a few exceptions. According to the Madh-hab of
Ahl as-sunnat wa-l-jamâ’at, the As-hâb of our master the Prophet
‘sall-Allâhu alaihi wa alâ âlihi wa sallam’ cannot be spoken of but
in favourable terms. None of them is bad or evil. The hadîth-isherîf,
“He who loves them, loves them because he loves me. He
who is inimical to them, is so because he is inimical to me,”
commands us to love them all. We should know that the fights and
combats between them were done with good intentions. We must
consider and hold them quite far from the wicked and base desires
and the recalcitrance inherent in the human nafs. Imâm-i-Yahyâ
bin Sharaf Nawawî [631-676 (C.E. 1274), in Damascus] states in
his explanation of the hadîths in Muslim that the As-hâb-i-kirâm
parted into three groups in the combats that took place in the time
of Imâm-i-Alî ‘radiy-Allâhu anh’. The ijtihâd of one group
showed them that the Emîr ‘radiy-Allâhu anh’ was right. It was
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