Abu Abdur Rahman reported: Ali ibn Abi Talib said: “When I narrate to you a tradition from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, assume from it that he is the most proper, the most guided, and the most righteous.”
Ponder This Quote
This quote essentially means that when Hazrat Ali (رضي الله عنه) would narrate anything he heard from the Prophet ﷺ, he wanted people to understand that those words were coming from someone who was the most rightly guided by Allah and the most righteous. The benefit of this is that we know whatever the Prophet ﷺ commanded or instructed us with was full of wisdom and righteousness — not baselessness or backwardness.
This is in stark contrast to how Ismailis are usually taught to view the Sunnah and the teachings of the Prophet ﷺ. They are taught that the Quran and all practices of the Shariah were meant for mindless, intellectually bankrupt Bedouins who neither knew right from wrong nor grasped spirituality in any sense.
The truth is the complete opposite. The Prophet ﷺ and the Companions were the best of us — both in intellectual understanding of the Deen and in spirituality. But the script has been flipped by those who do not truly understand who the Prophet ﷺ and his Sahabah were.
And notice — it is Hazrat Ali himself telling us this. The very figure Ismailis claim to follow is the one urging us to hold the words of the Prophet ﷺ in the highest regard, to see him as the most guided and most righteous. If Ismailis truly followed Ali (رضي الله عنه), they would revere the Sunnah, not dismiss it.