What is Shia Islam? - Twelverism

a general overview of the islamic religion as taught in schools and otherwise often divide the religion into two major branches the sunni and the shia and while this is of course a very simplified view there's in fact a lot of other groups and schools of thought and sub-branches within these two major branches it does point to two very sometimes distinct and significant communities of muslims both the sunni and the shia are in themselves divided into various sub-branches and schools of thought but when many perhaps most people talk about shia islam or the shi's they are usually referring to the most major branch of shia islam the kind of shiiism associated with iran and the government there the ayatollahs and places of learning like this branch of shiism is usually referred to as the ithna ashari or the twelver she is also sometimes known as the imami shia and in this episode we'll be giving you a general overview of the history and intellectual development of this very significant islamic community [Music] [Applause] [Music] this video is in collaboration with hikmah history an excellent historical youtube channel that is just doing a video covering how iran turned to shia islam as its official state doctrine this is one of the most important events in the history of shiism and that is exactly why we are doing this collaboration i will be covering 12verizon more generally and he will be giving an overview of the developments in the safavid empire and later dynasties which are so important the twelver or imami shia is a very significant community within islam today about 15 to 20 percent of muslims in the world are shiis and almost 85 of those shiites belong to the twelver branch in particular it holds political power in iran and thus also serves as an important player in world politics but where do the twelvers come from the even more general division of islam into sunni and shia has at its core a debate over authority they all believe in the prophecy of muhammad and the revelation of the quran but after the prophet died who was supposed to succeed him and in what way the group that would later come to be known as sunni believed that political authority was passed on to chosen members of muhammad's community the or caliphs and eventually accepted as righteous the first four abu bakr omar uthman and ali later caliphates like the umayyads and abbasids were often considered legitimate leaders as representatives of the prophet and god but are not revered in the same way as the first four in terms of religious or spiritual authority the sunnis would later come to recognize the community of scholars the ulama as the source of authority on law and belief as well as the sufi sheikhs and saints the shia had a different view instead they held that authority to lead the community was passed down and the prophet's family partly in a more general sense of being part of the hashimi clan but later becoming narrowed down specifically to the alid family line the progeny of muhammad's daughter fatima and ali his cousin indeed the name shia originally comes from the term shiat ali or the party of ali it is believed by shiis that ali was the true successor to muhammad a rule he had been given officially at the event of ali thus became the first so-called imam of the sheis and plays an enormous role in their theology and doctrines the title of imam or rightful leader was then passed down from ali to his son hassan then to his brother hussain and then continued in a line of patrilineal succession in the earliest period there were many debates around rightful authority in the muslim community we can in no way talk about a simple shia sunni divide at this time these communities as fixed identities wouldn't be formulated until many centuries later instead there were many different claimants to authority both politically and religiously some of whom legitimized their rule simply on power or other factors while others the alis did so based on their direct familial connection to the prophet early shiism is a difficult topic with many competing accounts but it seems that it was in many ways a kind of messianic movement many imams sons of ali and their sons and their sons etc who claimed authority and gained followers but according to later established shia doctrine there is a certain line of imams that is considered quote unquote correct or authoritative any later division of shiism into further branches is determined by which line of imams a certain community sees as true or legitimate in shiism there has to always be an imam in the world a person who has been given the knowledge or elim to interpret the quran and the sunnah of the prophet in the correct way and adapt adapted to new situations and times he the imam is given this knowledge by the previous imam who is his father who received it from the imam before him and so on this designation of the new imam the continuing of the line of imams is called nas and is central to shia belief the albeit or family of the prophet muhammad has been given the role to lead his community through their intimate and direct knowledge of the essence of the quranic message it's not that the quran is incomplete per se as i alluded to in a previous episode but the quran requires there to be an imam who has agnostic or true knowledge of its meaning so that he can interpret it correctly for the muslims the shii's criticized their proto-sunni counterparts for relying too much on their own minds in interpreting and understanding religion leading to division and confusion regarding beliefs and practices instead there is always an imam a possessor of full knowledge who has the authority to interpret the religion and to adapt it to new times and circumstances and according to the major schools of shiism there is always only one imam at any given time so the religious and spiritual essence of shia islam always revolve around a single pole a single point that determines all points and aspects the imam and this is true for all prophetic cycles earlier prophets like moses or jesus also had imams that succeeded them there simply cannot be any religion without an imam to lead people in this religion thus this doctrine of the imamites is at the core of all shia belief and spirituality it is the main point that distinguishes them from the sunnis even though they have developed many other unique features too and again the main difference between different branches of shiism is that they accept different lines of imams to be correct the two largest branches the twelver or ithnashadi or umami's and the second largest the ismailis all agree on the first six imams ali the son-in-law and cousin of the prophet is the first imam he was followed by his son hassan the imamit was then inherited by his brother ali's other son hussein after hassan was martyred in the battle of karbala in 680 an event that would become central to shia consciousness and belief his son ali zainal abedin became the next imam followed by his son muhammad al-baqr and finally the last imam that they all accept as canonical is jafar assad jaffar assad is one of the most central of the imams as he is often thought of as having originated or at least formulated many of the core shia beliefs for the first time he said have held an enormous amount of knowledge of all things religion as well as things relating to esotericism and the occult indeed according to many later writers all esoteric teachings within islam something that is especially prominent in different shi'i branches originate with the imams and jaffar asadik is one of the most prominent in this regard he is for example thought to have been the teacher of the famous alchemist jaber ibn haiyan even the sunnis like him and consider jaffa to have been a teacher of law to people like abu hanifa and malik ibn anas two of the most foundational figures of sunni islamic jurisprudence although the sunnis will often hold that jaffa wasn't a shia imam as such but a sunni scholar but you know still in any case there was a great split in the community after the death of jaffa rasadek some believe that his eldest son ismail was the rightful successor and these became known as the ismailis another group instead followed his youngest son musal chasm and this is the group that we know as the 12 verse this name is connected to the number of imams now remember jaffar as-sadiq was the sixth imam so musa al-qasim is the seventh he was followed by ali al-riddha then muhammad jawad al-taqi then ali al-hadi followed by hasan al-askari and lastly muhammad al-mahdi who was the last and twelfth imam the last imam was only a young boy when he was given the title after his father had passed and tradition holds that he immediately went into a lesser occultation or he went into hiding and only communicated with his community through a few advisors this continued for a number of years until 9 41 when he is thought to have gone into the major occultation this meant that he could no longer be contacted and would not be seen by anyone until the end of time he thus became al-mahdi a kind of messianic figure and it is thought that this 12th imam will return at the end of time just before judgement day to set the world right again and reinstate true religion and devotion this became a major turning point in twelve irishism as we will see and began a phase in their history that remains to this day as we saw earlier according to shii belief there can be no time when there is no imam present to lead the community and so according to the shi's al-mahdi isn't dead he is still out there somewhere in hiding and will return when the appropriate time has come and while he is gone he is temporarily represented by the scholars of the community this is where they get the name ethni which means 12 or 12 right because they believed that there were 12 imams that succeeded muhammad and that the 12th imam is the last one who has gone into hiding and will return in time for judgment day so this was the earliest period and you could say the first phase of twelve or shiism the phase or time when the imams were still present to lead the community now remember this was before there was anything like a clear distinction between sunni and shia but the shiis had definitely formed a unique community based around these worldly and spiritual leaders of the imam and thus distinguished themselves from many other muslims at the time but what is shiism like other than these basic facts what are the beliefs and practices that made them stand out well you could say that there was a clear shift or clear distinction between the first period the period of the imams and the period after the occultation of the last or twelfth imam the earliest period of shii history is quite obscure and there is a lot of debate in scholarship regarding the nature of its doctrines some view the early period as one of strict legalism which later became influenced by esoteric currents while many today emphasized that the esoteric aspects and many features of the imamit were in place basically from the beginning what seems clear to most is that in terms of jurisprudence or law as well as to some degree theology the early shiites differed in some significant ways from their proto-sunni counterparts while there are examples of companions of the imams that engage in theological speculation and debate the imams and their followers appeared to have had a rather strict attitude towards matters of law and doctrine whereas many of the proto-sunni schools especially in the earliest period allowed for different forms of independent interpretation and rational deduction in deriving law what is often called meaning opinion and things like analogy us the shiites were very much against these kinds of practices there was no room for independent reasoning and interpretation on part of the jurists in the early period and similar attitudes appeared to have been held in terms of theological speculation too this is true of both the twelver shiites as well as the ismailis at the time scripture and revelation was the only source of doctrine this makes complete sense really remember to the shiites the imam was the absolute authority on all things religion he had the true inner knowledge of the quran and the sunnah and could interpret and reinterpret them in the correct way so why would you ever start reasoning and interpreting things for yourself when you could just go ask the living imam for the answer which would always be the true and correct interpretation so it is partly as a result of the presence of the living imam as a person who carries the quranic message and its complete interpretation that we get this restrictive attitude the imam has complete authority and has all the answers whereas in the proto-sunni world there was no absolute leader but up to the community of scholars to figure out the answers as best they could but once the 12th imam went into occultation and was no longer reachable by the community what happens then what do the shiites do when they don't have that central authority at least not present in the world to ask questions and to get the right interpretation at all times well this is the reason probably at least one of the major reasons why we see a very clear shift in emphasis and methodology when it comes to law and also to some degree theology right after the time of the occultation it is in this period that we get some of the most formative scholars in shia history figures like sheikh mufild and his students like sharif al-murtada and sheikh tulsi would establish some of the key features of twelver shiism as we know it today and instigate a major shift in its intellectual trajectory sheikh mofidd put a major emphasis on reason as an important part in understanding and interpreting religious practice and belief whereas earlier the trend had been a much more strict following of the scripture and the teachings of the imam but because the imam was in occultation this was a new era in which jurists had to figure things out without the imam and for that reason and intellect akhel was central it is sheikh murphyd who started the process of bringing together shiism with the heavily rationalistic school of calam theology known as the mua tesla albeit a bit modified to fit the shia tradition an influence that is still central to shia theology today sheikh tuzi one of mufid's students is sometimes also considered the founder of shia juris prudence properly and compiled two of the four major shia collections of hadith in other words with these thinkers in the immediate aftermath of the great occultation we see a major shift in shia methodology and intellectual thought from a quite literalist and strict confined tendency in the period of the imams to a post imam period that was characterized primarily by the huge emphasis on reason and intellect as well as personal interpretation hd had as the major components of shii thought a characteristic that still is central to that tradition today now it should be kept in mind that some scholars disagree with this version of events writers like hussein modaresi instead emphasized that the companions of the imams themselves did engage in reasoning and interpretations in terms of law and doctrine and that it was only in the 9th to 10th century that the more traditionist tendency took over like i said the early history is often disputed and it's important to keep different perspectives in mind in any case a huge emphasis on reason from the 11th century onwards is often placed in contrast to the different schools of sunni jurisprudence which at around this time is often said to have done away with hd had or interpretation and instead entered a period of taqlid imitation and following of already established legal presidents of course these are huge generalizations and to say that these sunnis abandoned each day their interpretation is simply incorrect they would continue of course to reinterpret things just like the shi'is did but there is a certain difference in emphasis in that in the four major schools of sunni law most topics had been covered previously and there was a tendency in these schools to imitate or to look at the previously established legal rulings from their particular school and simply follow those traditions rather than going back to the original sources and reinterpreting things for themselves right and in shiism again while this is a huge generalization in shiism from this period and until today there has been a much bigger emphasis on this process of hd had of reinterpreting or going back to the sources the hadith of the prophet of the imams and the quran and using the or the reason and intellect of well of the jurist himself to interpret law and also theology to some degree for themselves the relationship between the shiis and what would later become known as the sunnis is a complicated topic in some regards they aren't that different from each other at all and can seem indistinguishable from each other and in other respects they can be very distinct and different in a general sense the twelver shia follow the same basic practices as their sunni counterparts they pray five times a day they fast during ramadan they give to charity and so on the quran is considered the word of god as the primary source in all matters as is the sunnah of the prophets the major difference here is the role of the imams who not only have a sunnah of their own but also have the absolute authority to interpret the sunnah of the prophet himself as well as the sunnah of earlier imams and the quran in this way the twelver shia as we saw earlier also have collections of hadith that they use as basis for law and theology but they have different collections of hadiths from the sunnis the sunnis have their sahih bukhari and sahih muslim etc but the shiites have different ideas about which of the companions of the prophet are more or less trustworthy and so have other chains of transmission when it comes to hadith the shia also have hadiths about the imams and their lives and teachings aside from hadiths about the prophet muhammad and these imam and hadiths are also authoritative in the same way the four main books of hadith in shiism are the kitab al-kafi manlaya tahavi bella kam and al esther later two of which are by the aforementioned sheikh tusi there are also practices that characterize shiism in important ways one of the most significant of these is the annual holiday known as ashura the commemoration of the martyrdom of imam hussain in 680 the third shia imam and grandson of the prophet muhammad hussain ibn ali fought a battle against the forces of the umayyad king of yazid in karbala iraq both he and most of his family were martyred in this encounter and this event is one of the central features of shia history and consciousness it often comes to represent the xi's role as a minority that faces oppression of tyrannical rulers and this event is commemorated each year in what is known as ashura where there are various rituals performed one will often beat one's own chest in a kind of solidarity with imam hussein's suffering and go on pilgrimage to his shrine in kerabala which is a massive complex in iraq today and this visiting of shrines in general known as ziada is also an important component of shiism one will visit the graves of the imams as an important religious practice the pilgrimage to karbala and imam hussain is by far the largest and most significant and can sometimes even equal the hajj to mecca in importance from this these shi'is have developed in various ways that have differed from the proto-sunnis and later sunnis the adoption of matasa light theology means that they viewed god as a unified essence without various attributes as part of that essence but instead as identical to that essence this is a theological jargon but this was quite an important topic and debates in theological circles at this time they have also often emphasized a certain level of esotericism and various doctrines about the imams and other things are often initiatory and secretive in nature indeed one of the key features of shii thinking in general is the division of reality and most things in it into two categories the exoteric the zaher and the esoteric batin reality itself has an outer visible aspect as well as an inner invisible aspect and in terms of religion and doctrine the same is true the quran has a zahid and a botan an apparent meaning and a hidden esoteric meaning that can be extracted through esoteric interpretation known as tawil indeed the sixth imam jaffar assad is believed to have said quote the book of god comprises four things the statements set down the implied purport the hidden meanings relating to the supersensible world and the exalted spiritual doctrines throughout shii history we see an emphasis on this division of the zaher and barten of things as another example there is the idea of the esoteric and exoteric imam the exoteric imam is the actual person of the imam who guides the community in the world while the esoteric imam is the akhl within every human being although not necessarily akhil has understood in later imamism as the intellect or reason as such but rather an earlier conception of the word meaning a faculty of consciousness that is able to recognize god and the truth a kind of inner divine guide that complements the outer divine guide of the human imam this esotericism of shiism is really prominent throughout its history and at least according to many scholars today like muhammad ali amirmuzi can be found in the earliest teachings of the imams themselves and their followers reading the earliest choices we get fascinating statements from and about the imams regarding their cosmological role the prophet muhammad always has the highest and most exalted role as a prophet a title that none of the imams are ever given but they are nonetheless called the hujat allah the proof of god and as the aosiya the guardians are custodians of muhammad's revelation thus shiism has always been esoteric in the sense that it is somewhat initiatory it is only the followers of the imams those who have been given the true esoteric interpretations and understanding of the islamic religion that constitute true believers and practice true islam everyone else is the people of zaher the people who only follow the outer meanings and practices of the religion and fail to see its true spiritual meanings which can only be taught by the imams this is true of early shi'i practices as well according to some sources there appear to have been what we could call spiritual or mystical practices in early shiism primarily concerned with quote vision with the heart this was probably a practice and theory taught to initiates that included prayers and other teachings so that one could see god or experience god in some way through the heart the shi'is have always had a very transcendent view of god like most muslims god is of course utterly beyond any description or understanding by humans as such he can never be seen with the eyes but he can in some way be seen with the eye of the heart and these early mystical practices of shiism appear to have focused on this practitioners could experience the light of the imam through this vision of the heart as well as other divine experiences given how early these sources are this is very significant in later sufism or tasawolf the idea of the heart as the human faculty able to experience god in some way would become a central theme this has led some scholars to connect these and figures like android corban have argued that all mysticism and esotericism in islam originally comes out of early shiism and the teachings of the imams other scholars will disagree with this and i would definitely argue that this is an oversimplification but it is very fascinating nonetheless the imams in themselves are also attributed with various miraculous and superhuman powers not only are they considered to be infallible according to majority xi opinion but many stories also tell of how they had access to occult and esoteric powers both through their inner knowledge of the secrets of the quran and of reality but also through employing things like astrology and even originating the science of letters or roof which became so popular in later islamic mysticism one of the sources of these esoteric powers is thought to be their knowledge of the most supreme name of god which was only taught to the prophet muhammad and to the imams and which is composed of 73 letters one of these letters is only known to god but various prophets and figures in history have known a few of the letters and this has been the source of their magical powers jesus for example could perform all his miracles just by knowing two of the letters and the same goes for the imams who together with the prophet muhammad knew 72 of these letters and thus were capable of amazing feats so the imams again is central to shii belief doctrine it is a central pole around which all of shiism revolves essentially whether it's traversim or the ismailis or all branches of shiism is centered around this figure of the imam whether he is a living mom in the world or an imam in occultation i mean in both cases he remains the central pole of the entire religion or yeah the entire religion according to she is and the absence of the imam the imam who is in occultation is a significant factor for practices and intelligence as well as we saw earlier as another example of this it is believed that only the imam can lead the community in jihad in the form of armed struggle or war but when there is no imam there can be no such war this means that the twelver shiis don't perform any form of offensive military jihad but only that of the defensive kind protecting the borders already established now some scholars especially in the safavid empire for example you know there could be loopholes to this doctrine when you're ruling an empire you need to be able to do offensive war in some way usually at least so there are nuances to this but in general this could be said to be true even today and many twelver xiii scholars today still hold to this general opinion that no offensive jihad or war can ever be performed while the imam is absent despite this though the twelvers have gained political power on occasion even before the revolution in iran in 1979. the brides who ruled the central lands of the islamic world in the 10th and 11th century adopted twelver shiism this was at the same time that the fatimids ruled further west in egypt who were themselves ismaili shiites so this was a time when shiism all the different branches of shiism ruled significant portions of the islamic world a situation that played a major role in the formation of what we know as sunni islam today as a kind of response to this precarious situation another significant example is indeed the later establishment of the safavid dynasty in persia and thus we have reached that meeting point of our discussion today by then shiism had continued to develop intellectually from the days of people like sheikh murphyd and we see a basically fully developed system of jewish prudence as well as other flourishing intellectual philosophical and mystical tendencies here's hikmah history himself to tell you more about the safavids the safavid started out as a sufi tariqa that over time evolved into a militarized shia order which vied for power on the persian plateau under shah ismail first they established a dynasty which ruled persia for the next 200 years they would go on to enforce 12ishism as the new state religion and sought to convert their citizens to the creed in the process positioning themselves as the arch rivals of the sunni ottomans to the west with who they fought countless wars throughout the 16th and 17th centuries in the east they were able to extend their rule over parts of afghanistan and central asia during the course of their rule they left behind a rich cultural legacy that is best exemplified by their imperial capital esfahan where symbols of their architectural brilliance can still be seen today in the many landmarks in the city such as the nakshi jahan square back to you philip in terms of jewish prudence or islamic law the safavid era saw some significant changes and developments the school of law followed by the twelver she is is called the jaffari school named after that very significant sixth imam jaffar assad and which has been developed by such significant figures as sheikh tuzi and his later followers under the influence of these scholars shiila had again become heavily reliant on reason and aged he had interpretation by a qualified jurist known as the mujtahid but under the safavids this rationalistic tendency was challenged by a resurgence of the traditionist school who rejected independent reasoning in terms of law and instead focused on a much more strict literalism of only using the written sources of the quran and the hadith from this movement the jaffari school of law came to be divided into two schools or tendencies the usuli which are the rationalists and the akhbaris the traditionalists and indeed from the osulis being basically undisputed the akhbadis grew so much in prominence during the safarid era that they made up the majority of shia scholars during most of the 18th century however since the 19th century the ussulis once again gained the upper hand and today the absolute majority of shi's follow the rationalistic usuli school so why did this great shift suddenly happen during the safavid empire well one thing could be that the shiites were suddenly in political power of a major empire which led to new questions having to be asked about the law in relation to that new position thus new discussions took place and new schools emerged in general the jaffari school of shiila isn't all that different from the schools of sunni law at all in most ways in terms of law they are basically identical but they can differ in certain details the xi's have a different position of the hands and arms when they pray the daily salah prayers for example compared to the majority of sunnis another major factor in shiite history and doctrine is the idea of taqiyya so because the shi'is have often been a minority in sunni ruled lands they have faced oppression and persecution from [Music] the majority community and because of this they developed this idea of takriya that it is permissible in extreme situations for shiites to hide their identity basically to hide the fact that they are shi's and perhaps pretend to be sunni muslims to avoid persecution so this has been a very important part of shiism throughout history which is not as prominent at all in sunni islam the she is also generally differ from the sunnis in allowing temporary marriage mutta and other such relatively minor details and we also saw their differing attitude towards jihad or arms struggled before so there are certain differences but in general and in most ways the jaffari school of shiite law is very similar to the sunni schools of law but even outside the realm of law and jurisprudence the shi'i intellectual traditions really flourished during these safavid era it is in this period that we see some of the most significant and influential intellectuals philosophers and scholars in history we have for example the great school of isfahan in which philosophy flourished under great figures like meeru damad and his even more famous and influential student mulla sadra these figures created a kind of synthetic philosophy that combined the peripatetic works of ibencina with more mystical or sufi strands of thinking such as suravardi and the great eben arabi this relationship between shiism and mysticism sufism is a complicated one but one that is definitely interesting as we saw earlier there were definitely things that could be considered mystical from the earliest days of shiism to the point that some have even claimed that islamic mysticism and esotericism originates in that movement but in terms of mysticism in the form of sufism things get a little more difficult sufism or tasawolf in arabic is indeed for the most part a sunni affair most sufi orders and figures are and were sunnis now there are exceptions to this for example the matulahi order which i have made an episode about previously but in the general sense this can be considered to be true but that doesn't mean that sufism didn't influence she thought far from it actually whereas in sunni islam we talk about tasawaf or sufism in shiism the preferred term or tradition came to be something that is called irfan which is sometimes translated as something like gnostic knowledge or gnosticism which if you watched my earlier episodes can obviously be pretty pretty problematic what is meant is a kind of mystical wisdom of philosophy distinct from a simply rationalistic falsehood tradition of people like eben cena or eben rust what this means in practice is that many ideas within sufism primarily its metaphysical speculations and some psychological theories were very much adapted by shii thinkers as essential to a comprehensive understanding of islamic doctrine and spirituality but instead they went under the name irfan rather than sufism which was often looked down upon especially in the safavid era what wasn't adopted usually were the practical aspects of sufism that is what sufism was according to the critical she thinkers various ecstatic practices that were considered questionable according to the law but that didn't mean that the philosophical ideas of the sufis and their view of reality was incorrect so this latter theoretical part was often accepted and called erfan while many of the practical aspects in other words sufism was rejected these are oversimplifications of course but you get the general idea this hostile attitude of the safavids and their scholars against sufism per se is especially fascinating given the fact that the safavid dynasty actually originated as a sufi order in the words of alexander knish quotes as a result in the iranian she emilia the nobler metaphysical cosmological and gnostiological aspects of sufism were excluded from this notion and renamed as wisdom hikma transcendental philosophy hekmatel muttaalia or divine gnosis irfan simultaneously the notion of sufism tasawolf per se was demoted to the antisocial behavior and crude superstition of the antinomian ignoramuses the doctrines of the great sufi master ibn arabi himself a staunch sunni became widely adopted into the later shi'i mysticism or irfan the relatively early figure of haidar amuli is very important in this regard as he became heavily influenced by the school of ibn adabi in particular and also came to adapt those ideas into a more clearly xi framework including the doctrine of the imams etc but it was especially with the writings of the already mentioned mullah sadra that this really took off mulla sadra combined the parapathetic teachings of ibn sina the illuminationist thought of suravardi and the mystical doctrines of ibn arabi to create a philosophy that he called al-hikmat al-muta'aliyah the transcendent wisdom or transcendent philosophy the thought of mullah sadra and the tradition of erfan became paradigmatic in shiism ever since he is often considered the most influential philosopher in islamic history after ibn cena at least in the eastern and shii worlds all the great shii scholars to this day study mulasadra and his mystical philosophy as an essential part of their training to some it may be surprising to learn that some of the great ayatollahs in iran and elsewhere were hugely influenced by mysticism and the thought of mulasadra even ayatollah khomeini was an expert on mulasadra and on the tradition of irfan in general indeed in 1989 romania actually sent a letter to the then soviet leader gorbachov and basically invited him to convert to islam as a better ideology than the communism of the soviets at the time and in the process he actually sent gorbachev a copy of ibn arabis for salhekam or the ringstones of wisdom as a book that to him basically represented the religion of islam in the best way and would sort of make gorbachev want to convert in other words the world is complicated and things like mysticism is often hugely oversimplified and colored by modern new age thinking but the reality situation is a lot more complicated than that eid fan has been a central part of xi intellectual thought until today and we can thus see that while its relationship with sufism is complicated there has always been an exchange of ideas between different schools of islam but what also becomes clear is that the safavid era is really a watershed moment in the history of imam ishiiism generally being given political power resulted in some very significant developments in all kinds of fields of knowledge jewish prudence philosophy quote-unquote mysticism and even to some degree certain art forms like music this era and the following centuries of khaljad rule also saw the increasing role of the jurists as leaders of the community as well as the representatives of the hidden imam a few years into safavid ruled the actual shahs or kings of the empire lost a large amount of their power and the fukaha the jurists essentially came to have the largest amount of power as we saw in the shi'i tradition of law especially in the dominant usuli school there is a major emphasis on hd had personal interpretation and the jurist who was trained enough that he had the authority to practice ishta had is known as a mujtahid the mujtahids and juris generally continued to hold very significant power in iran and in persia and the shiite world some would argue that their power increased more and more over time a development that basically culminated in the doctrine of the walayath the guardianship of the jurists which was formulated by ayatollah khomeini in the 20th century the title ayatollah which literally means sign of god came to be used primarily in the 20th century to denote the highest authorities in chi islam and includes people like khomeini as well as the very popular sistani today and the doctrine of the guardianship of the jurist essentially states that in the absence of the hidden imam the jurist has the authority to lead the community absolutely in religious matters this wasn't a new idea in shiism per se but what khomeini did was to extend that authority to political rule as well in other words the jurist or the highest jurist now had the right and indeed should be the highest authority over the state as well even the shah king or president of the country and it is on this basis that the islamic republic of iran was founded now important to remember is that not all shiites follow this idea and support wilayat al-fakhakri in the absolute sense as formulair so even today as has always been the case she isn't remains complex and diverse and there are many voices and opinions around questions such as these but now i hope you have somewhat of a better understanding of twelve or shiism its history and its major doctrines and intellectual developments in terms of law it doesn't differ much at all from sunni islam in most ways except in a few details but in other ways in terms of theology it's esoteric doctrines and other such things they can differ very drastically imams have at least since the 11th century put a major emphasis on akl on reason and intellect in its methodologies uh in terms of law as well as theology at the same time the she's especially in the early period and in ideas surrounding the imams appear to have always emphasized very esoteric ideas from the mystical and fantastical stories about the imams themselves their secret knowledge and powers to the later development of strong currents of erfan or mystical philosophies twelver shiaism is a dynamic tradition don't forget to check out hikmah history's video about how safavid iran adopted imami or travishism as its state doctrine an event that as we have seen became one of the deciding factors for this community in many different ways it provides an essential companion to this episode so don't miss out on it hikmah history does really amazing work educating the public about topics in islamic or islamic history so subscribe to his channel and check out some of the excellent material over there in the near future we will also be going in depth into that second largest shii community the ismailis so stay tuned for that but for now thank you so much for watching as always i want to thank my patrons who support this channel monetarily and i want to thank all of you out there who comment who like and and who are subscribed to this channel i really appreciate your support so much and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 233,554

Keywords: What is Shia Islam, Shia Islam, Intro to Shia Islam, Shi'ism, What is Shi'ism, Islam explained, branches of Islam, Islam documentary, how did Iran become Shia, Shia, Islam, Twelver Shi'ism, Twelverism, Twelverism Islam, Iran religion, Mulla Sadra, Shaykh Mufid, History of Islam, History of Shi'ism, Hikma History, Let's Talk Religion, Filip Holm, What do Shi'is believe, What do shia islam believe, Shia islam explained, Shi'ism explained

Id: kXWADQ7HivM

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022