Month: March 2019

‘Abdullah b. ‘Umar b. Al-Khattab is a companion of the Prophet who is regularly reviled in Twelver sources. He is constantly slandered and criticized by Twelver polemicists in an attempt to undermine his reliability as a transmitter of hadith and [read more]

Though the Imams of the Twelver sect are respected figures in the Sunni school, their image is not as exaggerated as they are perceived in the Twelver sect. Shi’ite scholarship, in fact, has continuously inflated the status of the Imams [read more]

How many an instance have we heard Twelver polemicists object to Abu Hurayrah’s reliability as a transmitter of hadith by citing his alleged transmission of 5374 reports? In this misleading appeal, which we have already addressed in this article, Shi’ite [read more]

Twelver orthodoxy today asserts that those who fought ‘Ali b. Abi Taleb were apostates who went against the “Imam of the time.” On this basis, Twelvers often excommunicate the likes of Mu’awiyah, Talha, Al-Zubayr, ‘Aisha and other companions of the [read more]

The “No True Scotsman” fallacy is a logical fallacy where a claimant attempts to defend a universal generalization from counterexamples that undermine its veracity. Instead of qualifying his generalization or addressing the counterexample(s), the claimant rather dismisses the counterexample(s) by [read more]

Twelver theology is primarily derived from a vast pool of reports that is mostly independent of the Sunni hadith corpus. The independence of these two bodies of transmission is the result of various factors, mainly: (1) the time gap between [read more]

It should not be a surprise for one to find the earliest historical sources replete with praise of the companions of the Prophet by the Imams of the Twelvers. Such reports demonstrate the defective nature of the Twelver historical narrative, [read more]

If Muslim religious leaders were to graciously accept financial “gifts” from blasphemous tyrants who openly opposed the religion of Islam, such as Netanyahu, Mladić or Stalin etc., then indeed that would be a sufficient reason to cast doubt on their integrity [read more]

A hadith occasionally cited by Shi’ite polemicists is the alleged statement of the Prophet where he is quoted saying: “Ali is the most knowledgeable from my Ummah after myself.” This report can be found in the 5th century hadith collection, [read more]