the farmer replied, even as he trembled in fear, for it was
clear that a refusal to take their side was the utmost
betrayal in the eyes of these men and that he himself
was about to be not the slayer but the slain. Yet as they
closed in around him, he took a brave last stand. “Ali
knows far more of God than you do,” he said.
With that, he sealed his fate. Ali was an apostate in
Rejectionist eyes, and anyone who submitted to the rule
of an apostate was himself guilty of apostasy, and his life
forfeit. They leaped on the farmer, tied him up, and
dragged him together with his pregnant wife beneath
the heavily laden date palms of an orchard next to the
river.
The details of what happened next are tellingly
precise. At one point, a date fell to the ground, and one
of the Rejectionists picked it up and put it in his mouth.
“You do that without the owner’s permission and
without paying for it?” said the leader of the band. “Spit
it out!” Then another began to swing his sword in
threatening circles and by chance hit a cow that had
wandered behind him, killing it. At this, the others
insisted he go ɹnd the owner and pay him the animal’s
full value. They waited while he did so, and then, having
acted with the utmost righteousness in the matter of
both the date and the cow, they meted out due
punishment. They made the farmer kneel and watch as
they disemboweled his wife, cut out the unborn infant,
and ran it through with a sword. Then they cut oʃ the