ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Shi’ite Islam: Orthodoxy Or Heterodoxy? Second Amended and Amplified Edition Foreword by Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi Body and soul are the two components of human beings; one is the husk and the outer shell while the other is the kernel and an inner spirit. Both dimensions need nourishment as well as protection.

Almighty God says, “[I swear] by the soul and Him who shaped it [perfectly], and then inspired it [the innate ability to understand] what is right and wrong for it! Indeed successful is he who purifies it and indeed failure is he who corrupts it.” (91:7-10) Each human being has the potential of soaring to the level higher than that of the angels and that top place in the pyramid of God’s creation can only be reached by developing one’s spiritual dimension.

Islām guides humans on both planes of their being: the ritual as well as the spiritual. The Prophet Muḥammad instructed the people on simple matters of hygiene, such as cleanliness, wuḍū’ and ghusl , as well as on loftier matters of spiritual ascension; he urged his followers to be physically strong to defend themselves in battlefields, and also charted for them the heavenly path of spiritual wayfaring.

After the death of the Prophet, regrettably the majority of Muslims were unable to combine the ritual and the spiritual dimensions in their religious life. They experimented with their faith in different ways: from the absolute freewill theory of Mu‘tazilah to the disguised predetermination [ kasb or iktisāb, lit.

“acquisition”] of Ash‘arī, from literalism or “fundamentalism” of the Ḥanābilah to the esoteric explanations of the extremists, from indiscriminate adherence to ḥadīth by the Mālikis to the personal opinions [ qiyyāṣ ] of Abū Ḥanīfah. Eventually, the Sunnī Muslims settled with the Ash‘arī theology and the jurisprudence of their Four Imāms. However, the lack of spirituality in this strand of Islām gave rise to Ṣūfīsm among the Sunnīs.

All along there was a minority which maintained, preserved, and spread the wholeness of Islamic teachings, and that was the Shī‘ah strand of Islām headed by the Imāms from the family of the Prophet, the ahl al-bayt . Shī‘ism emerged as the natural product of Islām which combined within itself its ritual as well as the spiritual dimensions. It is a path whose theology, jurisprudence, and spirituality flow from the same spring, the ahl al-bayt.