This is not a Shia invention. These are Sunni sources.

She lived about eighteen years and, as host Sayed Ali Alhakeem puts it, created an everlasting revolution. Yet the end of her life is still debated. Joining from Najaf, Sayed Mohammad Baqer al-Qazwini invites the audience to sit on a jury: to set aside sectarian reflexes, look at the evidence in the sources other Muslims themselves accept, and decide what is likely to have happened at the house of the Prophet's daughter.

Not just a daughter

Many prophets had daughters, and the Prophet (s) had others too. What sets Lady Fatimah (a) apart, the Sayed explains, is not lineage but virtue: the tradition that had Imam Ali (a) not been created, she would have had no equal. To those who object that she was only eighteen, he points to Lady Maryam (a), whom God addressed and chose above the women of the worlds when, by Muslim accounts, she was about ten, and by Christian estimates twelve to fourteen.

On the Day of Judgement, he says, she will be the first to enter Paradise, ahead even of her father, who wishes to honour her before all creation; all of creation will be told to lower their heads as she passes; and her intercession will be second only to the Prophet's.

Why we are allowed to ask

Isn't it divisive to open these files? The Sayed answers from the Qur'an's own method. It never simply calls someone good: it tells us why, as with Prophet Isma'il, "true to his promise," or Asiya, who rejected Pharaoh's tyranny. And in Medina it addressed the Jewish tribes, more than a thousand years after Prophet Musa (a), and said you took the calf (al-Baqarah 2:92), because they had never disowned what their ancestors did. Evaluating people by their deeds, he argues, is the Qur'an's approach to history, not a sectarian one.

"Allah is angered by her anger"

Before turning to the events, the Sayed recalls a tradition reported in Sunni sources: that God is pleased by Fatimah's pleasure and angered by her anger. "When are we most likely to act out of line? When we're angry," he notes. "God is effectively telling us: even in her anger, I trust her so much that her anger reflects My anger."

Exhibit one: a pattern of behaviour

The name that recurs in accounts of the attack is the second caliph, Umar. Many Muslims, the Sayed observes, meet any evidence with a psychological barrier: impossible, he would never do such a thing. So the first question for the jury is whether such behaviour would be out of character, and he cites two Sunni reports:

• The Sunni biographies of the Prophet (s), including Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, describe how, before accepting Islam, Umar beat his brother-in-law and struck his own sister, Fatimah bint al-Khattab, until she bled, on discovering she had become Muslim.
• After the death of Abu Bakr, al-Bukhari titles a chapter with the line that Umar expelled Abu Bakr's sister from the house when she mourned. Ibn Hajar's commentary supplies the detail from a Sunni historical report he grades as reliable: Umar sent one of his men, Hisham ibn al-Walid, who dragged her out and struck her repeatedly.

"We are not yet proving he was there," the Sayed stresses. "We are removing a psychological barrier."

Exhibit two: the threat at her door

• Ibn Abi Shaybah (d. 235 AH), in his Musannaf, reports that Imam Ali (a) and al-Zubayr used to meet and consult Lady Fatimah (a) in her house. Umar came and told her that no one after her father was dearer to him, but that this would not stop him ordering the house burned over them if they continued gathering there. When he left, she told them he had sworn by God and that, by God, he would carry it out. Every narrator in its chain, the Sayed notes, is considered reliable by Sunni standards.
• Al-Baladhuri (d. 279 AH) records in his history that when Imam Ali (a) did not give allegiance, Umar came carrying a firebrand. Lady Fatimah (a) said to him: Son of al-Khattab, will you burn my door against me? He said yes.

Exhibit three: how she left this world

Finally, the Sayed turns to Sahih al-Bukhari itself: Lady Fatimah (a) died angry with Abu Bakr and did not speak to him until she passed away, and Imam Ali (a) buried her at night without informing him.

The jury's question

Was her early death a natural one, with nothing behind it, or did something tragic happen? The conversation does not yet reach the attack itself; that, the host and guest agree, is for the next episode. But the Sayed's point stands for anyone who will look: "Regardless of the specific details, this is not a Shia invention. These are Sunni references." The viewers are asked to write the sources down and read them for themselves.