Prophethood and Wilayah Al-`Allamah at-Tabataba'i has written...

Prophethood and Wilayah Al-`Allamah at-Tabataba'i has written: The commands and principles of the din, one section of which are these social regulations, form, exoterically, a series of social concepts, and the connection of these with felicity and wretchedness in the next world , or, in simple religious terminology, with the blessings of Paradise and the afflictions of Hell, depends on realities which come into existence by means of the practice of these principles and regulations or the non-practice of them by man, and which are stored behind the curtains of perceptions, and become manifest and revealed after his transition to the second coming forth (the life of the next world) and the tearing of the curtains of heedlessness and the veil of egoism.

So underneath the veil, the social life which man spends in the observance of religious principles is a living event and a spiritual life, in which the blessings of the next world and its everlasting felicities originate. Or, expressed in another way, they are its phenomena. This is a fact and reality which has been given the name wilayah.

Nubuwwah (prophethood) is a reality which gains access to the religious commandments and Divine precepts related to life, and imparts them to people, and wilayah is a reality which comes into existence as the result of the putting into practice in man of what was caused to descend through the Prophet and the Divine precepts.