the psychology & theology of the shia cult

7/26/2019 The Psychology & Theology of the Shia Cult

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The Psychology and Theology of the

SHIA CULT

Being the Second Major Doctrinal School of Islam

Researched & Written by

SYED M.WAQAS

BAB-UL-ILM RESEARCH FOUNDATION

(BIRFINTERNATIONAL)

www.birf.weebly.com


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The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult 2

Shias, the Protestants of Islambut Catholicsin their icon and saint worshipare one of the two main

factions of the doctrinal world of Islam. The Shia doctrine is strictly based upon the concept of the

divinely ordained political legitimacy of the Prophet Muhammads scion.The core teachings of the Shia

doctrine do not accept the notion of the essential equality of the Companions and maintain a

fundamental difference between the so-called divinely chosen (the Imams) and the general

Companions. These Imams have every right to exercise theAmr, the Authority, over the rest in both

religious and worldly spheres. Thus, it gives enough space to found a political hierarchy of the type of

dynastic rule, as practiced in monarchical regimes, within Islamic system of faith. Their central belief

publishes Prophet Muhammad as the precursor of a hierarchy of several Imams,1 (politico-spiritual)

Divinely-Ordained Leaders, and the imparter of divine wisdom in the originator of the station of

Imamah, Ali.

The Shiamovement (also written as Shi'ah) allegedly began as a protest against the mainstream Islam in

the mid of 7th century CE. Traditionally it is believed that the cult took hidden birth in the wake of the

election of Islam's first Righteous Caliph, Abu Bakr. The Shia doctrine has always declared this election

'null and void'. Shias believe that the right of becoming the Commander of the Faithful(ArabicAmir al-Mumineen) was divinely vouchsafed for 'Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet (PBUH), and his

heirs in succession after his death.

The Shias believe that God commanded Prophet Muhammad to announce the final messsage of his

ministry, which they maintain is the proclamation of the period of Imamah, Spiritual Leadership. This

period would begin with Ali. The Quranic verse cited among the Shias to expound the foundational

truth of the Imamah rational is from the fifth Surah of the Quran,Al-Maidah.2

O Messenger! Make known that which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord, for if thou do it

not, thou wilt not have conveyed His message. Allah will protect thee from mankind. Lo! Allah

guideth not the disbelieving folk.

(Surah Al-Maidah 5:67)

They also quote a Prophetic Saying of obscure origin to establish the evidence of their claim. This

particular Hadithis known among the Shias as Hadeeth-e-Ghadeer. It reads:

O people, Allah is my Lord and I am the lord of the believers. I am worthier of believers than

themselves. Of whomsoever I had been Master (Mawla), Ali here is to be his Master. O

Allah, be a supporter of whoever supports him (Ali) and an enemy of whoever opposes him and

divert the Truth to Ali.3

1The doctrine of 12 Imams is the one strongest among the Shias, and the orthodox Shia creed is called The Twelver

Creed. More details have been given in the coming pages of this paper.2Al-Suyuti from Dur al-Manthurbased on the authority of Ibn Assakir, Ibn Mardawayh and Ibn Abi Hatimwho

narrate fromAbu Sa`id al-Khudri.3 This Hadeeth also appears in the Sunni sources, whereof the most prominent isJami al-Tirmidhi, Kitab al-

Manaaqib,Hadeeth No. 3713


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After the proclamation of this new era of the Spiritual Leadership, Imamah, there came down the final

verse of the Holy Quran immediately, which declared Islam being sealed into perfection on that day.

Today I have perfected your religion and completed my favour upon you, and I was satisfied that

Islam be your religion.

(Surah Maidah 5:3)

Thus, the Shias claim that their faith rests on the foundations derived from the Quran and the Hadith

with a particular hermeneutics of Shia slant. However, the history tells us something contrary to what

the Shias believe about their faith. It marks a certain period of the post-Revelation era being the origin

and development of the Shia doctrine.

Historically speaking, the very death of the Prophet of Islam can be deemed as the event of the friction

of the Muslim Ummah. The Companions of the Prophet, nevertheless, did not get into any serious

conflict and viewed the institution of Caliphate in the light of the Prophets Sunnah. This resolved the

issues without much delay and none among the Companions asserted the right to be the Caliph. Theprotest movement started much later with some foreign usurpers who voiced the differences in order to

reap the harvest of personal political and economic interests. Moreover, another reason for such a

protest against the Orthodox (i.e. Righteous) Caliphate was ethnic and geographic. New Muslims from

the Persian territory did not want to see the Arabs as their masters. Therefore, they watered the politics

of parties and continued to add fuel to the fire.

The protest grew stronger with the passage of time primarily under the Umayyad Dynasty, particularly

in the wake of various events of hostility and violence in which individuals closely or distantly relating to

the Prophets Household(ArabicAhl al-Bait) were assassinated. After the tragic event of Karbalain 684

CE, when Hussain, the revered grandson of Prophet Muhammad, and his family were assassinated, the

crude Shia movement quickly assumed the shape of an organized religious group in its own right. The

assumption of a distinct religious identity with its own ideological fountainhead was chiefly a reaction to

the political hegemony of the Umayyad Dynasty. Once having come to its own, the Shia doctrine

attempted to trace its origin in the political scenario developed after Prophet Muhammads death in 632

CE. Since the whole ideological growth of the Shia doctrine took place under Umayyad rule, it became

inherent in the Shia psychology to detest and rebuke as a religious obligation everything that belongs

either to the Umayyads or to those who, allegedly, did not side with Ali and his successors. On the

whole, seeking after its doctrinal nature, the Shia cult can be declared a political school of thought.

Soon afterwards, however, the purity of the political character was lost into the religious fervor of the

protestant-adherents and a new school of religio-political thought got birth from the very political

psychology of the Shias.

The Shias further have three main factions within the cult itself, namely Ithna Ashariyyah (the

Twelvers),Zaidiyyah(the followers ofZaid ibn Ali Zain al-Aabideen), and Ismailiyyah(the followers of

Ismail ibn Jafar al-Saadiq). However, the major faction has always been the followers of the Twelver

Doctrine. This schism of the Shias was yet again based upon the politics of the cult, for the conflicts of

succession always haunted their unity.


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A critical psycho-analysis of the Shia ideology will systematically strip it of its theological foundations

and expose the obsoleteness of its doctrine. In fact, the Shia doctrine is the most frustrated and

outdated doctrine among all major Muslim paradigms. The Shia movement, originally, began as a

protest against the political usurpation of non-Hashmites, i.e. those not directly coming of the tribe of

the Prophet, after the Prophets death. Therefore, the movement owes its raison detre to the ideology

of God-directed and God-permeated politics. They have always believed that Imam, a divinely

appointed spiritual leader of the rank of a Prophet, will lead and guide Ummah politically as well as

spiritually. In other words, the sacred and the secular have been coalesced in the Shia doctrine in

order to baptize their assorted materials as a self-consistent holy idea.

Twelver Shias have always been the major faction of the Shias, and they still dominate the Shia faith in

the world. The Hadeeth that supports the doctrine of the twelve Caliphs is called the Hadeeth al-Ithna

Ashar Khalifah, Prophet Saying for the Succession of Twelve Caliphs.4One of the Shia sources reports

the canonicity of the Twelver doctrine from the fifth Imam, Muhammad al-Baaqir:

Jabir said: I asked Imam Muhammad al-Baaqir about the meaning of this (Quranic) verse: "Verily

the number of the months (9:36)." He breathed long (out of sorrow) and said: "O Jabir, the year is

my grandfather, the Messenger of Allah, and the members of his family are its months who are the

twelve Imams, and are (naming the Imams one by one). They are the Proofs of Allah on His

creation, and Trusties of His revelations and His knowledgeso wrong not your souls in them' and

believe in all of them to be guided.5

The Twelvers remained an esoteric sect until 17th century CE with its mystery practicesthat may well

label Shiaism as a mystery cultof the nature of the ancient Near Eastern cults. The real test of the

Shias approached twice in the history of Islam: firstly in Egypt when the Ismailiscame to power in 9th

century and then in Iranin 17thcentury when the Safvidserected their dynastic rule. The Shias, hence,

achieved first time ever what they had always dreamed of as a distinct religious sect: the politicalauthority. However, the inception of Shia regimes both in Egypt and Iran brought no change in the

existing theology of the movement whatsoever and thus could not deliver. It continued to mourn and

protest the heinous usurpation of the Companions of theProphetwho had neglected the legitimacy of

Ali and his descendants. They did not abandon to mourn their political deprivation despite having

achieved it, namely the long-desired authority and a sovereign state to practice it. Now they could plant

the ideology of the Shiaism in its pragmatic form, as was previously claimed. Instead, the protest and

mourning practices, having been institutionalized, took solid religious shape, as they began to be

intensely practiced after the declaration of Fiqh al-Jafar as the state-religion, particularly, in Iran.

The shallow nature of the doctrine is immediately out when we objectively analyze its political ideologyin the post-Imamat era, which they style as the era of ignorance and disorder. This belief grants Shias a

4 The most authentic Sunni Hadeeth books, Sahih Bukhari, Hadeeth No. 9329 and Sahih Muslim, Hadeeth No.

4483, also assign credibility to the idea of Twelve Leaders/Caliphs. For instance, the Hadeeth from Sahih Muslim

reads: The Messenger of Allah said: This affair (Islam) shall neither pass nor will come to an end while my twelve

caliphspass in it. All of them will be from Quraysh.

5Kitab al-Ghaiba, by Shaikh at-Tusi


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most desired opportunity to erect the concept of a messianic deliverer, a Messiahof the kind of Jesus

Christ, called Mahdi, the One Divinely Guided. This end-time savior bears a great deal of

resemblance with the New Testament "Christ" in all major aspects including inception, disappearance

and 2nd coming. Muhammad al-Mahdi, they say, is the Son of 11th Imam, Hasan al-Askari, and he

disappeared during the Abbasid reign in a cave near Samara, Iraq, when the Caliphs forces were

attempting to track him down. The Abbasid Caliph wanted to slay the 6-year old miracle-worker

spiritual leader of the Twelvers, for he feared sedition and rebellion from his party. The whole

conception appears to have been borrowed from Christianity, especially from the versions of Christianity

then extant in Arabia and its surroundings, such as from the Monophysites and Nestorians. Similarly,

there is a strong presence of Gnosticismin the Shia faith particularly regarding the absolute holiness of

the Prophet, his Household, and the Imams as well as in the paradox of the Zaahir, Apparent, and

Baatin, Hidden. Gnosticism precepts are easily traceable in the text of the book associated with Ali,

Al-Nahj al-Balaaghah.

After the disappearance of al-Mahdi, Shias came to believe in two transitions of Mahdi

Disappearance/Occultation they term Ghaibat al-Sughrah (Minor Occultation) and Ghaibat al-Kubrah (Greater Occultation). The Minor Occultation continued for a little more than half century of

Mahdis disappearance, and a few chosen individuals, four canonized by the Orthodoxy, were believed

to have esoteric connections with him. Here these mouthpieces of Imam Mahdi acted in the fashion of

the Apostles of Christ who Jesus Christ, according to Christian doctrine, chose to express his will.

Mahdi acted in a like manner in the Shia paradigm and chose four such individuals (Arabic al-Nuwaab

al-Arbaa, the Four Leaders) that he was satisfied with to reveal Shia Kerygma. Hence, the will of

the final Imam mattered in every issue of religious as well as worldly import among the Twelver Shias

and it is why the Imam continued issuing his verdicts for a few generations from the lips of his elects.

However, this age of Minor Occultation, all of a sudden, came to an end with the utter stoppage of its

all-powerful hidden communication after 67 years of the Disappearance event. The Imam stoppedrevealing himself to anyone after the death of his final Safeer, Ambassador. This, in other words,

meant that Imam Mahdi denounced electing Shia individuals anymore and disowned his community in

toto. Ever since the death of the last Ambassador of Imam in 941 CE, the Shias have been praying as a

religious obligation for the appearance of the Hidden Imam, Al-Mahdi. The Shia Apocalypsewill take

place, according to popular belief, at the end of Greater Occultation.

Allama Baqir Majlisi (1616-1698 CE) is credited with the revival of Twelver Doctrine in its modern form.

Allama Baqir's theological reformation brought about a radical transformation within the cult and it

assumed the form of a practicing religion from an esoteric "mystery cult". In fact, there was no

"Ta'ziyyah"before 17th century in the way we see it today; however, it became the central institutionof the cult after the "Majlisi Reformation."

The Shia rationale of Hadeeth radically differs from its counterpart Sunni Hadeethmethodology. They

do not, per se, distinguish between a statement of Prophet Muhammad and the statements of the

twelve Imams in regard to their theological importance. Jafar al-Saadiq, the 6th Shia Imam, is reported

in principal Shia Hadeethbook Kaafi Kulaynias laying out the Shia vision of Hadeeth; he contends that

the words of an Imam are the words of the Prophet and the words of the Prophet are Gods words. We


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must do well to bear in mind that Prophet Muhammad appears merely the figurehead of the cult,

whereas Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, is the nucleus of Shia doctrine. The dynamic

mechanics of the cult originate from the sermons of Jafar al-Saadiq, hence the Twelver cult is

jurisprudentially named as Fiqh al-Jafariyyah. The most practical theological books among the Shias

after Quran itself are Kaafi fi Ilm al-Deen by Muhammad ibn Yaqoob al-Kulayni and Man laa

Yahduruhu al-Faqihby Ali ibn Baabawayh Qummi, both written in 10th century. According to both of

these books of Shia Hadeethdiscipline, there is a huge debate in Shia doctrine over the survival of the

original Quranwhether or not the Quran survived the age of usurpation and chaos after Prophets

death. One group believes that the Quran is intact and was never tampered with, but its impeccable

knowledge is with the Imamsthat is to say Imam are the infallible exegetes of Quran. On the other

hand, a goodly number believes that the present version of the Glorious Quran is incomplete and its

original, complete copy was the Codex ofAli, which was passed down to his descendant Imams until it

reached the 12thImam, Al-Mahdi. This original Quran is now in the possession of Imam Mahdi, who, as

the final guardian of the Quran, will return it to the Prophet Muhammad himself.6

Although a number of attempts have been made to systematize Shia theology, it still remainsinconsistent with the major portion of the Quran. Moreover, Shia theology appears self-contradicting

with its paradoxical parlances regarding God, the Prophet, his Household, his Companions and even the

Messianic figure of Mahdi.

6Al-Hilaali, Kitaab Sulaym bin Qays, Imams of the Rescued Sect,p.110; Abu Mansur al-Tibrisi,Al-Ihtijaaj, p.81

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