They frequently offer to their followers ‘the Taweez’ (amulate)...

They frequently offer to their followers ‘the Taweez’ (amulate), ‘threads’, ‘Tabeer’ (interpreting dreams) and the sorcery related services (cure/attack/protection against others). In return, their followers usually have to submit to them or to their Tariqat [7] after going through various rituals of submission called the ‘Bait’.

[8] The grave consequences to their followers, called the ‘Mureed’ are that they lose their self-respect, desire to learn the religion (Holy Quran and Ahadith) and their understanding of the religions is only confined to following the commands of their ‘masters’.

The Mureeds, therefore, stop reading and understanding the Quranic Verses and the Ahadith of Masomeen -asws , and just take religion from their peer/murshid [9] without being in a position to verify the authenticity of their instructions, which has paved the way to several un-Islamic innovations and rituals, i.e., kissing the hands of their peer, believing in the flights of their peer to Heavens, performing or abstaining from certain Harram/Halal on merely from the interpretation of dreams,… All of these were done in the name of Irfan/Maurifat, which according to their peers can neither be found nor attained through any other means but through following them as a ‘murshid’ (the guide).

As we shall see later (in the Holy Ahadith) the word ‘Murshad’ is only for the Divine Messengers (the Imams -asws ). Therefore, a parallel Islamic Philosophy in the name of ‘Maurifat and Irfan’, had emerged, as an alternate to the guidance from the Quran and Ahadith, with guaranteed faster and better spiritual powers, based on total reliance on the peer/murshid or in other words having total submission and ‘Tawaakal’ [10] on them (the non-masoom person).

Some of those Shias who have averted the total reliance on peers/murshids, are still influenced by the ‘Amil’ who make use of the knowledge of the ‘Abjad’ (letters) in making some other socio-religious decisions, e.g., naming the new born, interpretation of the Holy Quranic Verses by adding the numerical values of the alphabets, a recent trend where a ‘mullah’ asks his audience to count numerical values of a letter (adopting a pure Jewish and pre-Islamic mathematical approach).

In this article, we will try to examine the meanings of the above mentioned terminology and frequently used concepts in the field of mysticism in the light of the Holy Ahadith of Ahl Al-Bayt -asws .