Treachery and hypocrisy of al-Ashath al-Kindi

Amīr al-mu’minīn was delivering a lecture from the pulpit of (the mosque of) Kūfah when al-Ash‘ath ibn Qays [1] objected and said, “O Amīr al-mu’minīn this thing is not in your favour but against you.” [2] Amīr al-mu’minīn looked at him with anger and said :

How do you know what is for me and what is against me?! Curse of Allāh and others be on you. You are a weaver and son of a weaver. You are the son of an unbeliever and yourself a hypocrite. You were arrested once by the Unbelievers and once by the Muslims, but your wealth and birth could not save you from either. The man who contrives for his own people to be put to sword and invites death and destruction for them does deserve that the near ones should hate him and the remote ones should not trust him.

as-Sayyid ar-Raḍī says: This man was arrested once when an unbeliever and once in days of Islam. As for Amīr al-mu’minīn’s words that the man contrived for his own people to be put to sword, the reference herein is to the incident which occurred to al-Ash‘ath ibn Qays in confrontation with Khālid ibn Walid at Yamāmah, where he deceived his people and contrived a trick till Khālid attacked them. After this incident his people nicknamed him “‘Urf an-Nār” which in the parlance stood for traitor.