We know that in Imamism this “leader” can only be the Imam -asws himself...

We know that in Imamism this “leader” can only be the Imam -asws himself, or someone designated by him -asws . According to the early corpus of the imams, the collective prayer of the two feasts of the Sacrifice at the end of the month of Ramazan are specifically declared as impossible to perform in the absence of the Imam -asws or his delegate.

[32] On the other hand, since the leaders of the Imamite collective prayer on Fridays were named by the imams, once the Imam -asws is absent, it appeared as though the Friday prayer could no longer be practised, or that it was at least suspended” (mutawaqqif al-ijra) until the Return of the Mahdi -ajfj and his designating new leaders for prayer.

This situation prevailed throughout the pre-Safavid period, since at the beginning of the Safavid dynasty (circa 927/1520 to 1009/1600) nearly a hundred books or treatises were written to justify the legal status of Friday prayer. [33] The composition of these books was linked to the religious politics of the Safavids, specifically to attempts at setting up another Islamic “pole” in the face of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and the “ideologization” of Imamism, on the other.

We find ourselves facing the same phenomenon when it comes to the holy war. With the arrival of the Safavids, a number of polemical works were composed to prove the legal or illegal status of jihad in the absence of the imam.

[34] A solution was finally reached through compromise, and the doctor-theologians distinguished between two different holy wars: the offensive jihad, declared to be “suspended” during the period of Occultation, and the defensive, legal jihad, which may be obligatory in the case of an attack from outside.

The polemics and the juridical-theological debates in the Safavid and post-Safavid periods show that the question was still moot until relatively recently, when Iranian leader Agha Khumani went along with offensive Jihad. An Extract from Roots of North Indian Shiism [35] : In the Indian sub-continent, Friday prayers were not offered until late 18 th Century, as written by historian J.R. Cole. The first establishment of Friday prayers in 1786 helped provoke a crisis in India .

Prior to 1786, shias were only holding informal mourning sessions for the Imams, without any community disagreement on religious aspects. The first seed of contention was sowed when Friday congregation prayers were held at Hasan Riza Khan’s palace.