Without knowledge...

Without knowledge, one cannot love his Imam; and without loving the Imams, the Prophet and Allah, the faith of that person will be imperfect. This love of the Imam is so important even in the view of Allah, that He has named it a “reward for the messengership of Muhammad”: Say (O Muhammad): ‘I do not ask of you any reward for it (messenger ship) but love for my near relatives’ …” (4) Which Type of Knowledge Can Create Love?

There are two ways of acquiring knowledge about a person or a thing: a) knowledge based on research and study ( tahqiq ) and b) knowledge based on following the others (taqlid). Tahqiq means a person himself acquires the knowledge by studying until he reaches the level of certainty and conviction; whereas taqlid means a person blindly follows someone else in that matter. He himself does not study. He just believes in that particular matter because he trusts someone who told him to believe so.

From the Shi‘ite point of view, in matters of belief, it is obligatory for every Muslim to accept them and believe in them only after achieving conviction of their truth. To blindly follow others in matters of belief (like tawhid , nubuwwah , imamat , qiyamat ) is forbidden. The faith of a person who is a Muslim just because of the influence of the family or society does not stand on a strong foundation, nor will it be valuable.

He would not be able to defend himself against the propaganda of the anti-Islamic forces. We see that many Muslims who were religious in their own country, but when they come to the West their religious foundation is destroyed. The main cause behind this destruction of faith is not Islam, it is the “blind following” of these Muslims.

In their own homelands, they were Muslim just because of their society and family; and as soon as they leave the society and the family, the foundation of their “religious beliefs” is lost, and so they are easily exposed to the germs of kufr in the Western countries. If their religious foundation had been on tahqiq , the Western or the Eastern society makes no difference for them; and they would be immuned from the germs of kufr.

The Qur’an clearly condemns blind following in matters of belief: And when it is said to them, “Come now to what Allah has sent down, and the Messengers,” they say, “Enough for us is what we found our fathers doing”.