In substance...

In substance, any kind of failure in fulfilling our responsibility is an act of injustice on our part. We did not want to realize the significance of 'Ali ('a), or we had been unable to. All our energy and labour were devoted to proclaiming the Prophet's statements about 'Ali and to denouncing those who ignored them, but we failed to pay attention to the intellectual side of Imam 'Ali's personality. Sadi says: The reality of musk lies in its scent, Not in the perfumer's advice.

Applying Sa'di's words to our attitude regarding Imam 'Ali's personality, we did not realize that this musk, recommended by the Divine Perfumer, itself carried its pleasant aroma, and before everything else we should have tried to know its scent and become familiar with it. That is, we should have familiarized ourselves and others with its inner fragrance.

The counsel of the Divine Perfumer was meant to acquaint the people with its pleasant redolence, not for the purpose that they may believe that it is musk and then devote all their energies trying to convince others by arguing with them, without bothering to acquaint themselves with its real fragrance. Had the Nahj al-balaghah belonged to some other people, would they have treated it in the way we treated this great book?

The country of Iran is the centre of Shi'ism and the language of its people is Persian. You have only to examine the translations and commentaries on the Nahj al-balaghah to make a judgement about what our accomplishment amounts to. To take a more general case, the Shi'i sources of hadith (tradition) and texts of du'a' (prayers) are incomparable to the texts of the non-Shi'i works in the same field. This is also true of Divine teachings and other subjects.

The problems and issues discussed in works like al-Kulayni's al-Kafi, or al-Shaykh al-Saduq's al-Tawhid, or al-'Ihtijaj of al-Tabarsi are nowhere to be found among the works of the non-Shi'is. It can be said that if occasionally similar issues are dealt with in the non-Shi'i books, the material is unmistakably spurious, for it is not only opposed to the prophetic teachings but is also contradictory to the Quranic fundamentals. There is a strong smell of anthropomorphism which hangs around them.