After we have outlined the factors that have helped the past and present Sunnīs to achieve success in their studies on the Shī‘ism, and after comparing them with those of the Wahhābīs, the primary factor will appear to be the one that prevented the Sunnīs from getting caught in the trap of mingling the Shī‘ism with Extremism.
This is a critical stage because once the Wahhābīs’ diseased conception of linking the Shī‘ah school of thought to the Ghulāt is cured, the mistake they make when expounding Shī‘ah realities will also be treated; this, in turn, will lead to re-formation of their study system by basing it on a scientific and realistic approach. The contemporary Sunnīs have followed their predecessors’ methodology because they have been aware of the danger that awaits them at this stage. These people have given the Shī‘ism an interpretation different from that of the Wahhābīs. They openly pushed away the Wahhābī interpretation of the Shī‘ah realities and set up scientific criteria which the Wahhābīs should refer to before any investigation and interpretation.
It is, therefore, essential that this stage be carefully examined, so that ordinary Sunnīs do not walk in the footsteps of the Wahhābīs, who themselves cannot appreciate the importance of the Shī‘ah characteristics except through an awareness of the importance of this level.
This is why we expect the reader not to content himself with a mere inattentive study of this section, but ponder on the issue to arrive at a conclusion.
We expect that the Wahhābīs’ conscience will awaken and perceive the critical point, since it was an error at this particular stage that triggered all the Wahhābīs’ later misinterpretations of the Imāmiayyah realities.
Here, we desire that the Wahhābīs return to a true approach in their Shī‘ah research; an approach taken up by the Sunnīs of the past and the present and favored by Islam, too.
In my book “An Undetachable Link between the Shī‘ahs and the Ghulāt”—a product of the time I was a Wahhābī—I mingled the Shī‘ism and the Ghulāt, and as a result considered the Shī‘ahs as infidels. This was because I had been unable to view the Shī‘ism and the extremist Ghulāt as two separate things and had entirely relied on the Wahhābī literature—not even on the Sunnīs’—in my attempts to identify the Shī‘ah. This is the justification for crowning the pyramid with this very critical stage.
While I was still in my reverie of negligence, I used to attribute to the Shī‘ahs myriad beliefs taken from the Zoroastrians, idolaters, stories of the Age of Ignorance [Jāhiliyyah], Sufi nonsense and the extremists’ conception, despite the abundant apostasy found in them. I crammed all these in my book “An Undetachable Link between the Shī‘ahs and the Ghulāt”.[1] I thought I was doing the right thing. Then having known of this stage of investigation, I realized my mistake and learned that the error of taking the Shī‘ahs and the Ghulāt as identical would inevitably end in an inaccurate conclusion.
After I had corrected the crookedness of my mind, I was able to distinguish between what was attributed to the Shī‘ism but in fact did not belong to it and what was not recognized as part of the Shī‘ah school of thought but actually belonged to it. As a result, I burned the above book a little before it was supposed to be printed.
[1] When I was a Wahhābī I believed that the Shī‘ahs were more extreme and polytheistic than the Ghulāt themselves, but my long investigation and the scores of the Shī‘ah books that I studied—all proclaiming their aversion of extremist’ Sufi exaggeration and polytheism—made it clear to me that there is a fundamental difference between the Shī‘ism and the Ghulāt. I have put down all these positions in my book: “Shī‘ahs view on the extremes and the Ghulāt”.
