The Divine Mahdist Thesis and the Deviation of the Pretenders

“Every claimant to Mahdiship and to the Imamate, and everyone who adds to the Imams or subtracts from them, is an innovator who has strayed from the course that the Messenger of Allah (s) founded and that his pure Ahl al-Bayt emphasized, through firmly established intellectual steps.”

The Prophet (s) and the Ahl al-Bayt (a) did not leave the issue of doctrinal challenges without laying down foundations for it and paving for it a path that ensures the soundness of its course and of the course of everyone who embraces it. From the very first day of the launch of the Islamic call, a current of enmity emerged that adopted direct confrontation with the call of the Message; and when it failed to achieve its aim of defeating the one who carried the banner, it adopted the policy of distortion. Distortion is a hidden enmity that seeks to twist the course so as to arrive at other than the divine goals. Thus the struggle of the Prophet (s) was over the revelation (tanzīl) and the founding of religion and its values, and the struggle of Imam ʿAli (a) and of the Imams after him was over the interpretation (taʾwīl), that is, over the correct application of the values of heaven in reality. The Prophet (s) informed the Commander of the Faithful of this truth: “I fight over the revelation, and you fight over the interpretation.”

The Prophet (s) and his Ahl al-Bayt were most acutely aware of all of that, and they worked to fortify minds against confusion and deviation, and established a solid intellectual edifice to preserve the truth and the light of the truth until the last ages. This is among the most prominent of their (a) tasks pertaining to the Message.

Among the policies of distortion through which Satan and his helpers can enter, or with which Satan entices some simple people or those afflicted with a taint of thought or of heart, is claiming the lofty, pivotal stations in religion, so that religion and the Muslims may be in their grip, steering it wherever they want. By this the aims of the enemies of Allah are achieved, whether at the hand of a direct enemy of Allah, or at the hand of one whom the enemies steer without his realizing it.

Firmly Securing the Office of the Imamate and Mahdiship

So that no one would slip into this vacuum, and so that one who has no share in the matter of wilāyah would not appoint himself, the Prophet (s) and his Ahl al-Bayt (a) set out to firmly secure this office and protect it from distortion, whether by subtraction or by addition. The Prophet (s) emphasized again and again that the Imams are twelve successors after him, not one more among them and not one fewer. The narrations to this effect are mass-transmitted, varied in wording, and reported by the Islamic sects in all their diversity. He (s) said: “Twelve successors, all of them from Quraysh,” and “Islam will continue to be mighty until twelve successors”[1]. Indeed, he linked the twelve with the twelves of the Noble Qurʾan, so that the falsifiers would not prevail and the believers would not doubt about any addition or subtraction; he (s) said: “Your successors are twelve, the number of the chiefs of the Children of Israel,” and “the number of months with Allah” (Qurʾan 9:36). He specified their identity as being from Quraysh, their kinship, and even their names: they are “twelve from my household, from my progeny.” Then he specified the first of them and the last of them, saying (s): “O ʿAli, the first of them is you, and the last of them is their Qaʾim,” and so on, until he mentioned them by their names. All of that was so that the centrality of the Imamate would be a decisive sign, which the misleaders could not penetrate and the doubters could not infiltrate; thus he cut off the path to all the attempts at distortion that tried to hijack the office of the Imamate.

The narrations that have come from the Prophet (s) and likewise from his Ahl al-Bayt (a)—of which the author of the book Muntakhab al-Athar fi al-Imam al-Thani ʿAshar[2] mentioned three hundred and ten hadiths—established the process of firmly securing the Imamate through several foundations, which are:

1/ That the Imams after the Prophet (s) are twelve Imams, a number that is not one fewer nor one more; and the linking of this number with verses of the Noble Qurʾan: the number of the chiefs, the tribes, the months, all of which do not change or alter, and which are known, well-known, and inscribed in the decisive text of the Book of Allah.

2/ He specified their general identity, that they are from Quraysh, and likewise specified their particular identity, for they are from his household and his progeny.

3/ He specified their relation to him, and even their names, one by one.

4/ He emphasized the first of them and the last of them: ʿAli (a) is the first of them, and al-Mahdi is the last of them and their Qaʾim.

5/ He specified the position of al-Mahdi, and that he is the one who will fill the earth with equity and justice, and that he is the absent, awaited one and no one else; and all people must await the coming forth of him in person, so as to join his blessed caravan.

Challenges and the Sifting of Faith

The believers know, by the light of their insight, that there will be those who come out claiming the Imamate, and especially Mahdiship, in the age of his Occultation, and that this is one of the places of sifting and of the test of faith. Imam al-Baqir (a) said: “Our relief will not come until you are sifted, then sifted, then sifted—he said it three times—until Allah removes the turbid and the pure remains.” So the pure are those who stand firm on their wilayah, made firm by Allah, His Prophet and his Ahl al-Bayt, and who await the relief, which is the Qaʾim, the seal of the Imams (a).

Guidance is what the Prophet (s) and his Ahl al-Bayt (a) said, upon which they and their sincere companions stand, and it is the path of the Twelve Imams. Therefore Imam al-Sadiq (a) said: “Blessed is he who holds fast to our cause during the Occultation of our Imam, so that his heart does not swerve after guidance.” Doctrinal guidance is realized among the believers, and whoever brings something new in the matter of wilayah is astray and is not to be paid attention to in any way.

The Signs of the Reappearance Are a Confirmation of Mahdism

The Ahl al-Bayt (a) frequently mentioned the signs of the holy Reappearance of the Master of the Age and Time (aj), and mentioned the events accompanying his noble Reappearance. These signs made clear to the believers throughout the ages that the world awaits one specific Mahdi, who is of the lineage of Fatimah al-Zahraʾ (a) and a son of Imam al-Husayn (a), and whose father is Imam al-Hasan al-ʿAskari (a). He was born in his time, and disappeared from sight in a Minor Occultation, which was followed by a Major Occultation, and he will reappear in the end, when Allah the Exalted permits, to fill the earth with equity and justice after it has been filled with oppression and tyranny.

This precise individuation in specifying the identity of the awaited Imam (aj) is a confirmation of the idea of Mahdism, so no one can steal it from the minds and hearts of the aware loyal adherents. Likewise, that Reappearance will be clear and not confused, because the inevitable signs that will accompany it are signs by which the believers, and even the lost, will be guided; there is no obscurity in them and no doubt about their becoming manifest to all people.

The Pretenders to Mahdiship

In the era of the Imams, Satan would call his allies to put on the garb of the Imamate through the following:

1/ Usurping its worldly office, and claiming legitimacy for the office in order to control the course of the Islamic umma and to prevent the true Imams from leading the umma. The likes of the Banu Umayya and the Banu al-ʿAbbas undertook this task, and unjust rulers are still trying to control religious discourse and restrict it so that no one may step out from under their cloak. This is the method; it is the very same one followed historically.

2/ Claiming the Imamate and claiming rightful entitlement, by way of mistaken interpretation, twisting the facts toward a sect or a personality, in order to attribute divine legitimacy to it, so that it can then act in leading the umma and exclude the true leadership embodied in the Household of Prophethood and the locus of the Message.

Many persons undertook this task, beginning with the claimants to prophethood and the Imamate, or the distortion of the meaning of prophethood or the Imamate, such as Musaylima and Sajah, and Muhammad ibn Abi Zaynab al-Asadi[3] in the era of Imam al-Sadiq (a), and Abu Mansur al-ʿIjli, whom Imam al-Baqir (a) called (the messenger of Iblis)[4] and cursed, and ʿAli ibn Abi Hamza al-Bataʾini, who founded the Waqifiyya and reduced the number of the Imams, and others.

After the Major Occultation of the Master of the Command (aj), Satan exploited the existence of sick souls and enticed them to claim Mahdiship, given that the concealment of the true Imam continues for a long period; he regarded the opportunity as favorable for demolishing wilayah and the course of divine truth. Therefore many pretenders came out whose projects ended in failure and vanished from the pages of history; however, they polluted the minds of some of the weak, and some of their polluted dregs still serve falsehood and its people.

But the Ahl al-Bayt (a) had clear insight into this line and this deviation, so they informed their Shiʿa of the appearance of these people and warned them against them. They informed that there would come from among their Shiʿa (one who claims a sighting before the coming forth of the Sufyani and the Cry), and they judged him to be a lying fabricator. And Imam al-Sadiq (a) spoke of the clear signs before his coming forth, in order to cut off the path for every claimant to the Imamate or to Mahdiship:

From Abu ʿAbd Allah (a), who said: “The Qaʾim has five signs: the appearance of the Sufyani and of the Yamani, the cry from the sky, the killing of the Pure Soul, and the sinking into the earth at al-Baydaʾ.” And from him (a) in Kamal al-Din: “Before the rising of the Qaʾim there are five inevitable signs.”

Demolition from Within

The policy that the enemies of religion followed to demolish religion is to gnaw away at its bones so that it ends up in weakness and inability to face challenges, and so that it goes along in their train. It is the policy of demolition from within, and of demolishing religion in the name of religion; it is the easiest way to attract those who have a religious sense and to make them pickaxes of demolition without their realizing it. In fact, this policy makes use of the ember of faith that religion has created in souls, but while changing its direction toward another direction, different from the purposes of religion and from the reality of religion, until the matter ends in the adoption of a different sect, another school, or a new religion.

This is what happened with many sects whose pretenders came out in the name of religion at the beginning; then, little by little, you see their wheel moving in the direction of Western aims and the aims of the enemies of religion.

Unmasking the Pretenders

One can easily discover the logic of demolition and the spirit of enmity toward religion and the people of religion among the pretenders to Mahdiship or the pretenders to wilaʾi centrality, and everyone who has invented a claim of his own in order to delude the believers with it—such as the pretenders to being a gate (bāb) to the Messenger and the Imam, or the pretenders to the Mahdist ambassadorship (sifāra), and the claimants to being the Yamani and the Mahdi, or the claimants to the infallibility of the method in the age of the Occultation, such as the Qasdiyya, or others who have claimed the validity of every religious experience of anyone among people, and that there is no meaning to error in life, in the name of religious modernity. This can be done by observing two directions:

The first: founding upon demolition, not upon building. Because they are not like the prophets, who came to backward societies, acquainted them with their problems with all affection, brought the word of monotheism that saves nations, and explained the ways of the Sharia that light the path by calling in the manner that is best, the pretenders have come to fish in troubled waters, to exploit mistakes here or there, and they work to magnify them, and even to fabricate them, then to feed on them, and they try to attract people through them.

Indeed, their demolishing foundations direct their arrows only at the root of the creed. You see them claiming that all the ages that followed the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam were ages of pitch darkness and total ignorance, and that they have come to save people; so there was no guidance before them, and no good efforts by any of the scholars before them.

Their logic is belittling everyone other than themselves and despising every effort apart from theirs, and this is the very demolition that the enemies of religion want.

The second: gradually diluting the creed and the rulings of religion. What the enemies of religion want is to make religion a body without a soul, a framework without content, and a name without meaning. Some are exposed at the outset of their claim, and some are exposed gradually: with some of them, infallibility becomes a general matter not specific to the Twelve Imams; or it is the creation of a substitute and a deputy for the Imam, who becomes a pivot in whose hand are the keys of every matter; and they strive to distort the Book with ambiguous methods that follow their sick (deviant) souls. Just as the claim of ambassadorship started out by insisting strictly on adherence to the command of the absent Hujjah, until it ended in abandoning the Sunna in understanding the Qurʾanic text and adopting modern methods in understanding it, and so in rejecting the introduction of religion into public life, and in legislating permissiveness and submission to the West; and thus you see that everything the West wants has a heading and a chapter in their legislations clothed in the garb of religion.

The One Who Adds to Us Is Like the One Who Subtracts from Us

Through the integrated intellectual policy that the Prophet and his Ahl al-Bayt (a) followed regarding the Mahdist thesis, the awaited Imam (a) has become a decisive sign to which everything ambiguous is referred back. When tribulations become ambiguous and follow one another upon the mind, it has only to refer them back to the decisive Mahdist idea: if they agree with it, they have agreed with the truth, and if they contradict it, they have contradicted the truth. There is no Mahdi before him and no Mahdi after him; he is the final, sealing Mahdi (a).

Therefore, whoever reduces the Imams from their true number of twelve and denies some of them, like the Waqifiyya, the Kaysaniyya and the Zaydiyya, is like whoever adds to them and increases them beyond twelve; they are equal in their distance from the truth and in their deviation from the matter of wilayah and of sacred Mahdism.

Imam al-Hasan al-ʿAskari (a) mentions this truth with complete clarity, free of any ambiguity,

for one of his companions asked Imam al-Hasan al-ʿAskari (a) about those who stopped at Abu al-Hasan Musa ibn Jaʿfar (a) (and his uncle had died), saying: Shall I take them as allies, or dissociate myself from them?

Al-ʿAskari (a) wrote to him: “Do not ask for mercy for your uncle—may Allah not have mercy on your uncle—and dissociate yourself from him. I am, before Allah, free of them, so do not take them as allies, do not visit their sick, do not attend their funerals, and never pray over any of them when he dies. It is the same whether one denies an Imam from Allah, or adds an Imam whose Imamate is not from Allah, or denies, or says: the third of three.

Indeed, the one who denies the cause of the last of us is one who denies the cause of the first of us, and the one who adds to us is like the one who subtracts, who denies our cause.”[5].

Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi