ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Emergence of Shi'ism and the Shi'ites The First Discussion: Denial, Neglecting the Question of Succession [^1] Based on such an attitude, the Prophet would have assumed a stance of denial with respect to the Mission of Islam, being content to pursue his own leadership role and to direct the Mission only while he lived. He would thus have abandoned it to circumstance and chance.

But such a position of denial cannot be assumed for the Prophet, because it would have to arise from one of two issues that fail to apply to him. First Issue This consists of the belief denial and neglect cannot affect the fate of the Mission, and that the Ummah that would soon inherit the Call of Islam was capable enough to assume the responsibility of protecting it and ensuring against its distortion. In fact, this belief has absolutely no basis.

Rather, the pattern of events was such as to point to something else. This is because the Call - being from the outset a mission for revolutionary change aimed at constructing an Ummah and at eradicating every root of pre-Islam from it - would become exposed to the worst dangers if the stage were suddenly voided of its leader, or abandoned by him without any pre-arrangements.

Firstly, there are the inherent dangers engendered by trying to confront this vacuum without any advance planning, and by the urgent need to take a makeshift position while still under the massive shock of having lost the Prophet.

If the Messenger had abandoned the stage without planning the course of the Islamic Mission, the Ummah would for the first time have faced the responsibility of managing the most serious problems of its mission without a leader but brandishing not the slightest prescription.

The situation called for immediate and swift application - despite the gravity of the underlying problem - because a vacuum cannot persist.[^2] Indeed, a hasty measure was taken at a moment of shock for the Ummah, reeling as it was from the loss of its leader.

This was the shock which, by its very nature, was to upset the course of thinking in Islam, leaving it in such disarray that its effects induced a well-known Companion to announce that the Prophet neither has nor will die.[^3] But such a measure could not but entail danger, with the most undesirable consequences.