ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Conception of the Sahaba's Ultimate Decency and the Political Authority in Islam Part 3 — Chapter 1 — Signification of Authority It has been conspicuous that the entire Sahaba's ultimate decency conception did create a factual authority that installed seeable effects on jurisprudential and political life of Islam.

This authority occupied the position of the doctrinal one defined by God and explicated by the Prophet of God, owing to ordinary transmission and imitation. The doctrinal authority, because of policy of oversight and propounding the surrogate one, became unfamiliar to the degree that some people conjectured his illegality. They saw the surrogate one as the legitimate.

For providing a distinct exhibition of legal facts of the legitimate doctrinal authority, we are to allocate a specific title for this purpose. Authority is that body whose mission is explicating judgments, as well as rulings, of the divine Islamic doctrine. Such an explication must not be attained by supposition and conjecture. It must be attained by such a way of certitude and conviction that it must be identical to the divine intendment.

Applying so, the believers will be accepting this explication of the doctrinal authority as an intellectual or invariable fact that can be taken as a conceptional base or a path upon which ideas are structured or march is commenced. In his lifetime, the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) is the authority of the Muslims to whom they refer in the doctrinal affairs, and whose words are the decisive judgment since he is believed as the most knowledgeable of the doctrinal rulings.

After the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), the head of his household — the Imam — is the authority regarding his most knowledgeability of the doctrinal affairs. This is the Shias' conception. The Prophet's companions, individually and congregationally, are representing the reference of explicating the divine doctrine after the Prophet's decease. They are entirely decent. Each individual of them is decent. They are the eternal occupants of the Paradise.

They are the witnesses who conveyed this religion to us.[1] For all of these qualifications, the Sahaba are the legitimate authority. Hence, it is a matter of fact that pursuing any of such individuals shall inevitably lead to the right [1] bn­Hajar Al­Asqalani's Al­Isabetu Fi Tamyizis­Sahaba, page5 and on. path.