The motivation behind the writing of this book came about from my personal experience. From my humble Christian background Allah (swt) guided me to his deen (religion). The brothers who converted me were themselves Salafi and hence I was indoctrinated to their aqeedah (ideology). The earliest thing that I was told was that I should be weary of the enemies of Islam disguised as Muslims such as Shi’as who portrayed Islam on the outside but were infact kaffir, on account of the “facts” such as:
You can imagine how this made me feel, being constantly told about this, time and time again. Hence I bore extreme hatred towards the Shi’a in my heart. As a brother told me “You should hate the Shi’a with a vengeance”.
Two years after I reverted I married a Salafi sister of South Asian descent – whilst practising, she was rather less exuberant than I was in active Dawah activities.
A few weeks after we married, very close friends of my wife invited us both to dinner. It was only when I arrived there that I learnt that the family were Shi’a, had I known earlier I would have probably never gone.
The host was very kind, but kept asking me questions on my beliefs etc. I tried to side-track, but he kept prying and this made be feel very uneasy. This was our first meeting but we met many more times in the coming weeks, on account of the fact that his place of work was next to the University where I studied. He tried his hardest to convince me that the Shi’a were correct in their beliefs, but I simply programmed myself to believe that he was a kaffir who was practising Taqiyyah. Despite this after a year of heated discussions my heart was starting to accept some of his arguments. Whilst I would simply regurgitate whatever my Salafi brothers had taught me – he would always reply logically and would back up his comments by citing traditions from classical works such as Sahih al Bukhari.
In truth I had not discussed any of these conversations to my Salafi brothers, until I was out one day and visited a market stall that was run by two Salafi reverts. After our general salutations I informed one of the brothers that I had a friend who was Shi’a and inquired whether he knew anything about the Shi’a faith. No sooner did I say the name “Shi’a” that the brother’s face changed colour, he said:
“Brother don’t talk to them they are kaffir (infidels), they believe that the Qur’an has verses missing”.
I told him that the Shi’a I had spoken to denied this and countered me by presenting a tahreef tradition from Sahih al Bukhari – with Umar stating that a Surah on stoning is missing. The brother was shocked and after about a minute’s silence he said:
“brother they did black magic with your eyes you didn’t see it!”
This really made me laugh and I walked off. I proceeded to do my shopping and was just passing the stall again when the brother called me over and introduced me to a revert who he acclaimed as an “expert on Shi’aism”. The ‘expert’ said:
“So you wanna know about the Shi’a kaffir, all you need to know is that they believe in 12 Gods”.
Even I from my general conversations with the Shi’a brother knew that this was a blatant lie. I then decided to test him by quizzing the fact that Shi’as believe ‘Ali to be the Prophet (s)’s legitimate successor and I cited the Sahih tradition ‘Ali is to me as Harun is to Musa except there shall be no Prophet after me’.
The ‘expert’ then countered this by asking:
“And what did he (s) say about Umar[r]?”
I knew exactly what he was asking and said:
“If there had to be a Prophet after me it would be Umar”.
The expert patted me on the back and said:
“Exactly brother”. I then asked him “That being the case why did Umar not become the first Khalifa? Is this not an insult to Hadhrath Umar?”
The expert looked bemused, smiled and said:
“Brother you’ve just used your Aql (reason) and that’s haraam”.
It was that reply that will act as a permanent memory for me. I still remember looking over to the revert brother who owned the stall following this reply, he smiled a half smile, that to me suggested that he was about as convinced at the reply as I was. For me this was the turning point in my life. The sheer stupidity and lies I heard at that stall convinced me that the Salafis were trying to cover something up. Alhamdolillah, the ‘expert’ achieved greater success in guiding me to the Shi’a than the Shi’a brother had, despite a year of rigorous debating! It was his blatant lies and lack of logic that repelled me away from the Salafis and attracted me to the Ahl’ul bayt (as).
You might ask ‘what has this to do with the preface?’ – well only a handful of brothers are fortunate enough to ever meet knowledgeable Shi’as and learn the actual truth. As the vast bulk of reverts are brought to the Din by the Salafi’s the opportunity of them ever actually meeting and discussing matters with Shi’as is highly unlikely. This is increased when one takes into account the level of propaganda and lies that are pumped into a revert’s mind with regards to the Shi’a and what they allegedly believe. When I look back at my time with the Salafis I recall that they never talked about ‘Ali (as) – why? Well since becoming Shi’a, truth has been made manifest – they are the Nawasib, his enemies – and are hiding their enmity behind the “Sunni label”.
That’s why I had asked the brother who sacrificed so many hours of his time to guide me, to write a rebuttal of their lies and expose their actual aqeedah to the world. I hope that this book opens the minds of my fellow reverts who have been deceived by the Salafis. It is indeed sad that these same reverts who embraced Islam having researched the truth with an open mind and logical reasoning, abandon these same principles when being indoctrinated into the Salafi movement, preferring to blindly follow every word of their Nasibi Shaykhs. I also hope that the book acts as a source of inspiration to my down-trodden Shi’a brothers and sisters who have to put up with the Salafi Nasibi propaganda onslaught on a daily basis.
Your brother in Islam,
Abdul Hakeem Oranu.