A letter sent to the community in the name of the God al-Ḥākim, who has entrusted the keys of heaven and earth to the one He appointed as guiding Imam and guardian over souls on the Day of Reckoning and Presentation.
For a long time we have dealt gently with you through decisive verses, you people of rebellion, heedlessness and forgetfulness. Your souls have refused to receive truth and honesty because of the unbelief and apostasy to which they were accustomed in earlier times, and the lies and slander in which they were reared. You have increased in doubt, deception, obstinacy and hypocrisy in the face of the ordinances of wisdom, and in denial and rejection before sound admonition.
We sent this letter to you with the son of the trustworthy one and the Jew. In our judgment both are full of hostility, obstinacy and division: one is a servant of Mukhallā, the unfaithful, treacherous and profligate pretender; the other follows the expelled, thieving apostate known as the Magian. This is an argument against them and against you, with the aim of exposing those who have rejected the truth. They had previously been of the company of those whom we trusted, but they have now turned from their former course. We have sent this proclamation as proof against them. Let it be read to the gatherings of people who are jealous for the religion and disapprove of the filth of lies and calumny. Let those who recognize the need to uncover the faults of rebels carry its argument to anyone among the people of the towns whose uprightness they know.
For seventeen years we have presented to you God's proofs, decisive arguments and clear signs, together with the severe warnings and reports contained in the Guardian's wisdom. Yet these mighty verses have increased only your unbelief and rebellion: you have turned your backs on the epistles of wisdom. After this communication the connections of fellowship and kinship between us and you will be severed. This is the text of the proclamation:
"In Your name, O God, Master of the Command, the just Imam and Qāʾim of this age and time!
"To the fanatical, denying party, blinded to the truth after having known it and received instruction: the beginnings of their actions have turned them toward degradation and distorted forms, toward an abhorrent and humiliating condition outside the truth. Their hearts are lost in bewilderment; they turn away from the truth and cannot restrain themselves from destructive vices. They have followed the cries of the devils of the interval, when falsehood must be distinguished from truth, and the rabble and dregs of the nations. Their souls have made attractive to them the hypocrisy, obstinacy, and debauchery they knew in former times. The verses and the wise remembrance do not restrain them, nor do they stop imitating the disgusting actions of pretenders, because their souls have become intermixed with impurity and shameful deeds.
"Their souls are too weak to bear the truth, being diseased and ruined; in their own nature they reproduce the filthy offenses and violation of covenants in which they were caught in previous times. Through their deception they have become accustomed to companionship with the devils of the successive cycles, their spirits mingling with rebellion against the Imams of the ages. They expect neither a life to come nor a reward, and they do not recognize the return and the recompense awaiting them. The interval has robbed them of their reason and intelligence, and obedience to devils has made them forget their spiritual ranks and the doors through which they were taught.
"O misguided company! Have you found no warning in the miraculous wisdom of the Guardian of the Age that has reached you through his servant? Alas for you! Have you learned nothing from the decisive verses on divine unity and the books of the righteous? Where are you going, away from the truth? What religion do you claim to practise while persisting in abominations? No possessor of understanding came to defeat you in argument and so beguile you; no teacher arrived with knowledge better than what you had already learned to deceive and destroy you; nor did a man of worldly wealth arrive to seduce you with his possessions. You have forgotten the followers of Abū Jawf, while your lowest parts have become your highest.
"Look at the practices you have adopted. You have no cause for them except that your souls are habituated to the orders of devils and stained with ignorance and opposition. You seek distinction through the very depravity in which you have become singular, though on the Day of Presentation and Judgment you will have to answer for it. With what argument will you defend yourselves? Which piece of knowledge that came to you gives you grounds for doubt? God is your adversary, and you are the wrongdoers.
"We have learned that Mukhallā is the cause of this great innovation and scandal. May God neither raise his standing, nor bring his project to completion, nor prolong his life except for punishment, disgrace, and exemplary retribution. May He place him among the low, profligate pretenders who have been led away from the truth.
"No admonition or further letter remains for you among us, rabble of the nations. The bonds of relationship and kinship between us have been severed. Have you run to these abominations after learning of the prohibition issued against the innovations of the apostates? You had received the book sent to the upright, trustworthy and faithful man, the associate of divine unity and right guidance, and had read The Crushing of the Pretending Pharaohs. Yet you have forgotten the landmarks of self-restraint and praiseworthy religion and chosen rebellion, unbelief, obstinacy, and denial. Enter whatever road to immorality you find; commit whatever outrage against the sanctity of religion you can discover. You have openly resisted the people of religion and truth and unsheathed the swords of falsehood against all creation.
"Understand what is set forth in the wisdom of the Qāʾim, the Imam—may God's peace rest upon his remembrance—concerning those who carry out your actions, under the images of transformed creatures, male and female. He explains the condition of one who invites another man to his own wife under the image of the jarīth, a kind of river fish. The husband invites another man to his wife and so exposes the baseness and ugliness of his own conduct; the fish is made the image of this humiliation. The man who makes his wife available to another falls into the shame of such an act, and his degradation is manifest in the worlds: outward disgrace now and torment for the grievous sins he has acquired thereafter.
"Likewise, when the wisdom describes women displaying themselves who obey men of immorality and betrayal and have departed from the realities of religion, it gives the image of the hare. As for the words concerning shameless women who display themselves, the teaching presents the image of the hare. The hare represents a woman who betrays her husband and brings misery upon herself. Through the defilement of her soul and the gravity of her condition, she does not purify herself of her pollution and enters the houses of God carrying inward corruption and a curse.
"These are descriptions, in the wisdom, of those who commit offenses and depart from the truth and the reality of religion. The pure friends of the faith are innocent of their deeds, while such descriptions belong to apostates and usurpers."
Whoever belongs instead to the company of the truthful and obedient, among the sincere, pure and certain Unitarians, recognizes the unity of our Lord, the divine al-Ḥākim, the Almighty who requites through His guiding Guardian those who persist in opposition, obstinacy and resistance. Such people acknowledge the imamate of the guiding Qāʾim, through whom the nations are delivered in their times and cycles. They also recognize that al-Muqtanā is His weak and insignificant servant, especially when compared with the exalted ranks of honor and light that preceded him.
Let such a person honor himself by rejecting the abominations of these coarse fools, repudiating them and remaining faithful to the wisdom of the Qāʾim, the guiding Imam. Through the refinement of his soul let him distinguish himself from those given to vice and the distorted minds of beasts, without joining them in speech or action. This faction and those who repeat their words belong to impurity, hypocrisy and folly. With their filth, ugliness and corruption they have effaced the signs of religion and departed from truth. May God banish and curse them for fabricating additions to religion, stirring up sedition against the pure followers of its ranks, and grafting on to it the uncleanness of those who apostatize and oppose its truth and wisdom.
I commend the people of reverence, obedience and restraint—and those who have repented and confessed their error—to God, who grants His Guardian victory, triumph and deliverance of His friends, bringing them from the constriction of devils into the breadth of justice and relief. God is sufficient for His weak servant al-Muqtanā, who follows the easy path of truth; He humiliates those who choose the crooked, difficult road of falsehood.
Whoever repents of this innovation in the presence of the brethren, and calls God and His Guardian to witness that he renounces his error, accept his repentance. Answer his appeal according to what you recognize of the sincerity of his intention and his acceptance of the truth and obedience. This exception does not include the unfortunate covenant-breaker Mukhallā—may God destroy him through his own offense—who has denied the favor bestowed upon him. No such innovation can arise at a time like this except through an accursed devil, a slanderer who spreads malicious reports. Whoever obeys benefits himself; whoever disobeys brings degradation and estrangement upon himself.
The letter sent to the community is completed. Praise belongs to God; in Him I seek assistance. He is the best helper and protector.