What is Shi'i Islam?

An Introduction

Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Christian Jambet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351604864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

For the public at large Shi'ism often implies a host of confused representations, suggesting more often than not obscurantism, intolerance, political violence and other ignominies running hot or cold in response to world events. In fact for many people, Shi'ism stands for "radical Islam", or – worse – "Islamic terrorism". In some respects, nothing is more familiar than Shi'ism, and yet nothing is more misunderstood. For some twenty years the media have increased their coverage of the phenomenon. Never, or only rarely, do they formulate the question we ask here: what is Shi'ism? What is this belief that inspires millions of people dispersed throughout the world?

This book provides a broad based introduction to Shi'i Islam. It examines what the Shi'i believe, how they see themselves and how they view the world. It includes a thorough examination of doctrine, philosophy, the Shi'i approach to the Qur'an and the historical evolution of Shi'ism as a branch of Islam. Too often, and too quickly, the conclusion is drawn that Shi'ism is a marginal heretical sect, fundamentally alien to the deeper truth of the great religion of Islam, thrust by historical accident onto the political stage. Shi'ism either speaks the truth of Islam, meaning that it is a truth of terror, or it is entirely foreign to Islam and, therefore, merits outright rejection, as Islamic fundamentalists and some individuals repeatedly claim. This book intends to explain why such common misunderstandings of Shi'ism have taken root.

Written in an accessible format and providing a thorough overview of Shi'ism, this book will be an essential text for students and scholars of Islamic Studies or Iranian Studies.

Part I

Doctrinal foundations: The early beginnings of Shi’ism

1 Origins and conceptions of the world

Shi’ism is the oldest religious current in Islam, for what may be called its core principle dates from the time when the problem of succession to the Prophet Muhammad first arose. Shi’ism is the largest of the Muslim minority movements and is considered by the “orthodox” Sunni majority to be Islam’s most significant “heterodoxy”; that is, “heresy”. To be sure, the Shia themselves hold their doctrine to be the supreme “orthodoxy” of Islam.

The Arabic word shi’a – meaning party, faction, faithful – came to be used gradually as an antonomasiac designation of what appears to have been the first of several political-religious “parties” to emerge within the Muslim community; it was the party of those who claimed the exclusive right of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and of his descendants, to guide the community in spiritual and worldly matters. According to the tradition, at the time of Muhammad’s death in 11/632, two different conceptions of who should succeed the Prophet collided. A majority of Muslims claimed that Muhammad had not clearly designated his successor and resorted, therefore, to the ancestral tradition of electing a tribal ruler. Thus, a counsel of the Prophet’s Companions, together with influential members of the most powerful clans of the Meccan tribes, appointed a venerable figure who was advanced in years and came from Muhammad’s own tribe of the Quraysh. Their choice fell on Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s old Companion and one of his several fathers-in-law. Accordingly, Abu Bakr became the first caliph (khalifa) of the new community (the technical meaning of the title seems to have developed later), and thus his followers are the ancestors of those later designated as “Sunnis”.

The followers of ‘Ali were on the opposing side. They maintained that Muhammad had clearly designated ‘Ali as his successor. He had done so, they argued, on several occasions in various ways, directly and indirectly. In their view it could hardly have been otherwise: how could the Prophet have left the important matter of his successor in abeyance? Could he have been so indifferent to the future leadership of his community as to leave it in uncertainty and confusion? This would be contrary to the very spirit of the Qur’an, in accord with which the successors of the great prophets of the past had been chosen from among the closest family members, who were privileged by blood ties as well as by initiation into the mysteries of their religion. True, the Qur’an does recommend seeking counsel in certain instances, but never in matters concerning the succession of prophets, which is fundamentally an issue of divine election. As far as his followers – those later called Shia – were concerned, ‘Ali was this chosen heir, designated by Muhammad and confirmed by the Qur’an. In this instance, ‘Ali’s youth – a dissuading handicap for the adherents of ancestral tribal customs – was not of any particular importance. We will return to this point later. ‘Ali is thus deemed by Shia to be their first imam (guide, leader, chieftain; like the term “caliph”, the technical meaning of the word imam came much later). The concept of imam referred to the true leader of the community, even if he did not effectively hold power. and as we shall see, the figure of the imam will become the central notion in the Shi’i religion, which never employs the term “caliph” to designate its leader.

Thus Shi’ism is as old as the dispute over who should succeed the Prophet of Islam. Even so, it cannot be reduced to this alone. The Alid claim of legitimacy is just the starting point for monumental doctrinal developments in which the central issue of the “prophetic inheritance” acquires numerous complex meanings. These in turn shed light on important historical events. For this reason, though it may seem odd at first, we find it more apt and more illuminating to present the doctrinal issues in all their specificity before dealing with historical events. In the case of Shi’ism – and no doubt in all religious systems which base their legitimacy on ideas, practices and texts held to be sacred – doctrinal history goes hand in hand with general history, if indeed it does not shape that history to a large extent. When the essential aim is to reveal the true meaning of sacred things, when the mode of understanding and the mode of being impact on and co-determine one another, what is experienced becomes an essentially hermeneutic situation. Thus, the beliefs, the articles of faith and the very ideas will have as their fundamental mission the revealing of the true but hidden meaning of existence. Relying on historical and critical method, our aim is nothing less than to restore to historical events their inherent density, which often goes unrecognized.

What, then, are the specifics, the spiritual bases, of Shi’ism? What doctrinal characteristics distinguish it from other Islamic religious movements? When we consider the texts, the oldest sources that have come down to us (compiled for the most part between 250/864 and 350/961), it quickly becomes clear just how very rich and teeming – indeed, at times, chaotic – the Shi’i religion actually is. The divers origins out of which these ideas emerged or, indeed, even the profusion of tendencies that have become discernible over time, do not explain everything.

The earliest extant texts reveal Shi’ism to be a vast and amazingly complex edifice. Theology and Qur’anic exegesis rub shoulders with esotericism; jurisprudence exists side by side with magic; cosmogonic myths coexist with devotional practices. For reasons to do with certain teachings, information can be dispersed quite intentionally; the narrative of chapters can appear confused, the plot broken. Moreover, the sheer volume of texts may momentarily frustrate the researcher who struggles to impose cohesion and clarity. Teachings are frequently presented piecemeal in countless texts and in traditions (hadith) dating back to the time of the imams. They require an effort of collection, compilation and classification in order to clarify a single idea in its entirety.

True, the extraordinary range of doctrinal developments, the striking abundance of Shi’i literature in so many areas (exegesis, theology, mysticism, law, philosophy, historiography) or, indeed, the sheer intellectual force of so many different authors offer objective if implicit proof of a fundamental coherence, even though at times it may seem hard to discern. The following synthesis, the fruit of many years of study and the scrutiny of thousands of pages, represents an attempt to draw out this underlying coherence, thereby making possible a better comprehension both of structural features and of points of detail.

The central axis around which all Shi’i doctrine revolves is the figure of the imam. In Sunni Islam the term has no particular importance; it can designate a chief, a ruler, a religious scholar or a prayer leader. But for the Shia it is a sacred title. Simplified to the extreme, Shi’ism might even be termed predominantly an “imamology”. In every respect – from theology to ethics, law, exegesis, cosmology, ritual and eschatology – every aspect of doctrine, every principle of faith derives in the final analysis from a conception of the imam as the “Guide” and has no meaning apart from him. Shi’ism itself is ordered around a dual conception of the world. We will see how the figure of the imam is ever-present in all of Shi’ism’s different manifestations and serves as its true centre of gravity.

A dual vision

All reality, from the highest to the most trivial, has at least two aspects: a manifest or visible one (in Arabic, zahir) and a secret or hidden one (batin), concealed under visible reality and capable of containing even more hidden levels (batin al-batin). This dialectic of the manifest and the hidden (the exoteric and the esoteric) – the two are distinct, yet interdependent – expresses a basic article of faith ever-present in the minds of thinkers and the learned elite but also pervading the beliefs of the masses of the faithful. How does this dialectic express itself in the different religious disciplines?

We turn first to its expressions in theology. God encompasses two levels of being, two ontological planes. The first is Essence, considered incomprehensible, unimaginable, beyond all knowledge and thought. This hidden esoteric level of God is the absolute unknowable “abscondity” of God. But if the matter went no further, there would be no relationship, no possible communication between the Creator and his creatures. Therefore, God in His Goodness caused to be born in His own Being another level: the level of Names and Attributes through which He reveals Himself and makes Himself known. This revealed exoteric level of God is no longer “God the Unknowable”, but “God the Unknown”, or God “Who desires to be known”. It recalls the Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus of medieval Christian theology. Names and Attributes function in creation through vehicles and divine Instruments, that are the physical places of God’s manifestation in so many theophanies. The most important theophany, the highest locus of revelation of the divine Names – that is, what can be known about God – is a metaphysical being that various Shi’i authors at different periods called the Imam in Heaven¹: the Imam of Light, the Cosmic Man. This refers to the Imam (always upper-case “I”) in his universal ontological acceptation. Knowledge of his reality is thus equivalent to what can be known about God, since the true revealed God – He who manifests what can be manifested in God – is the Cosmic Imam.

The Cosmic Imam in turn also possesses a hidden dimension and a manifest aspect. His esoteric aspect – his unrevealed face – is precisely his metaphysical cosmic aspect – “in the heavens” is the formulation of the earliest sources. His exoteric aspect – his physical manifestation in the visible world – is expressed in the historic imams (lower-case “i”) who live in the various time cycles of sacred History. These considerations point us in the direction of another discipline: prophetology.

The Shia believe that each great prophet, each messenger from above, is accompanied in his mission by one or more imams. It has been so since Adam, the First Man and the first prophet, until Muhammad, the “Seal of the Prophesy”, by way of many others: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Solomon or Jesus, among others. Throughout all the many cycles, the great messengers and great imams have been connected by an uninterrupted chain of prophets, imams and minor saints who form the great family of the “Friends of God” (awliya’, plural of wali), those who possess and transmit the divine Covenant, the walaya – a central tenet of Shi’ism which refers, among other things, to the imamate. They are the physical places of manifestation of the archetypal Cosmic Imam, his revealed face. Thus knowledge of what is knowable in God, the supreme mystery of being, begins with knowledge of the man of God or, more precisely, the Man-God, for he is the theophanic man. Knowledge of whom results in knowledge of universal Man, the mirror wherein the divine Names and Attributes find their reflection.

Why is this so? The “Friends of God” transmit to mankind the Word of God. At particular moments in time the Word of God is revealed through Books, Holy Scriptures, brought by the great law-giving prophets, those the Qur’an describes as “endowed with firm determination” (ulu’l-‘azm). Though lists of names may vary, the most frequently named prophets are Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.² Furthermore, since the Revelation appeared in the form of a Book, the divine Word has both a manifest exoteric aspect and a secret esoteric aspect: a “letter” beneath which the “spirit” lies concealed. Of course, the prophet-messenger knows both levels. However his mission is to transmit the letter of the Revelation – the exoteric level, “that which has descended” (al-tanzil) – to the greatest number of people, to the ordinary faithful of his community. As we pointed out above, a prophet is accompanied in his mission by one or more imams.³ By virtue of a strict parallelism and complementarity, the imam’s mission lies precisely in revealing the secret of its origin (ta’wil), not to all but to a small number of initiates, the elite of the community. The Shia thus affirm their minority position in the community as a sign of election. Without the imam’s initiatory teachings, the text of the Revelation will not convey its full depth; it is a letter whose spirit remains unknown. This is why the Qur’an is called the silent Book, the mute Guide, and why the imam is called the speaking Qur’an. Though the Prophet, of course, knows both levels, he remains the messenger of the exoteric aspect of the faith or of that exoteric religion which Shi’i technical terminology designates as islam (literally submission, or submission to the letter of the Revelation), which makes the ordinary faithful muslims (those who submit or “muslims”). Parallel to this, the imam is the messenger of the esoteric aspect of the Revelation, the initiator of the spiritual religion that lies hidden beneath the letter, known technically as iman, literally “faith”. Therefore, the people of the faith – the “faithful believers” or mu’min – are those initiated into the secrets of the religion; the men of the esoteric; the followers of the imams; in a word, the “shia”. This is why all religions have had their majority “muslims” and their minority “shia”; a throng of “exoteric folk” incapable of profundity, and an elite made up of the “people of the esoteric” initiated into the spiritual layers of the faith. Historical Shia, descending from historical Islam, are thus the final link in a long initiatory chain tracing its origin back to Adam and to the initiated “shia” of his imam Seth.⁴ What then is the initiatory teaching of these successive imams? Its ultimate message is the unveiling of the mysteries of God, of man and of the world; that is, in Shi’i terms, the mysteries of the Imam: Man manifesting in creation the revealed God, the Secret of Secrets in all religions. The historical, the earthly imams are, so to speak, keepers and transmitters of a secret, the essence of which is very precisely the metaphysical Imam.

This dual conception of the world can be delineated on a table of “terms of complementarity” based on the dialectic of the manifest and the hidden.

Manifest	Hidden
exoteric (zahir)	esoteric (batin)
Names and Attributes	Essence
Prophet (rasul, nabi)	Imam/wali
Prophecy (nubuwwa)	Imamate/walaya
letter of the Revelation (tanzil)	spiritual hermeneutic (ta’wil)
submission to the exoteric (islam)	initiation into the esoteric religion (iman)
majority/ordinary masses	minority/elite

A dualistic vision

In Shi’ism, alongside this dual conception, another fundamental belief exists. It is a dualistic vision of the world. The history of creation is the history of a cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, between light and darkness. Given the central role of initiation and knowledge in Shi’ism, as we have just seen, it can be affirmed that knowledge is the Good and ignorance the Evil. The struggle between the respective forces of these two universal but antagonistic powers is woven into the very fabric of life.

According to cosmogonic traditions, the characteristic feature of the Creation from the very beginning is the battle between the opposing Armies of cosmic Intelligence (al-‘aql) and cosmic Ignorance (al-jahl). These, in turn, are symbols and archetypes of the Imam and his followers on the one side and of the Enemy of the Imam and his henchmen on the other. This primeval struggle has an echo in every age and in every historical cycle throughout all time. It pits the Friends of God (i.e. the prophets and the imams) and their faithful followers against the forces of Ignorance. Using Qur’anic expressions, Shi’i texts tell of the constant struggle between the People of the Right (ashab al-yamin) and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Note
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: Doctrinal foundations: The early beginnings of Shi’ism (MAAM)
• PART II: The sources and contents of the sacred teachings
• PART III: The historical evolution of Shi’ism
• PART IV: Shi’ism, wisdom and philosophy (CJ)
• Conclusion
• Index