Grand Ayatollah Shirazi: God accepts belief in monotheism, prophethood, imamate all together
The daily scholarly meeting of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Sadegh Hosseini Shirazi was held on Thursday, Muharram 29, and Friday Safar 1. During this session, like the previous meetings, the Supreme Religious Authority answered the questions of the attendees about various jurisprudence issues.
Grand Ayatollah Shirazi cited the famous hadith of the Holy Prophet: “Any person who dies without knowing the Imam of his time, has died the death of ignorance”, and said that this issue includes every person who does not know the Imam of his time.
For example, the disbelievers who die spiritually blind, if guilty of deliberate shortcoming in terms of achieving knowledge of their Imam, they deserve Divine punishment, but if inadvertently mistaken, he does not deserve punishment.
His Eminence continued: During the major occultation, knowing the Imam of the Time means that a person believes in the Imamate of Imam al-Mahdi as the twelfth Imam, while they do see the Imam only.
The Marja also cited the first speech Amir al-Mu’minin made in his “Apparent Caliphate”, and said: “In this speech, which may have been included in Nahj al-Balaghah, Imam Ali said something to the effect that God Almighty does not accept monotheism without belief in Prophethood, that is, God does not accept the monotheism of someone who accepts God as unique and just, and bears witness to all His attributes, but does not accept the Prophet of Islam.
In the same way, if someone accepts monotheism and prophethood, but doesn’t accept Willayah, God will not accept his faith.
Grand Ayatollah Shirazi further stressed that without belief in prophethood, monotheism is not accepted by God Almighty, and without belief in Imamate, monotheism and prophethood are not accepted by God Almighty.
So, this hadith from the Holy Prophet which says: Every person who dies while not knowing the imam of his time, he has died the death of ignorance, means: God expects us to accept the three principles of monotheism, prophethood, and imamate together, and imam means leader, that is, he should know who the imam of his time is and obey him.
This ideology is based on the honorable verse; O you who believe, obey Allah and obey the Messenger and the one who bears {Divine} authority among you.
There were other topics discussed in this scholarly meeting, including: exegesis of verse 80 of Surah Al-Kahf, the verse of purification, the invalidity of the claim that the month of Safar is inauspicious, the ruling of doubt of impurity between two clothes, the reward of studying and reciting the Qur’an, some rulings on usury, rulings on loans given by banks for Arbaeen pilgrimage, rulings on purity for people who do not observe impurity and purity, rulings on selling endowments, some rulings related to fishing, the ruling on consent in the marriage contract, the reason for the difference in the narrations, and some of the additions that Amir al-Momineen mentioned for some verses of the Qur’an.
It should be noted that the series of scholarly meetings of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Sadegh Hosseini Shirazi is held every day in his residence in the holy city of Qom, Chaharmardan Street, alley 6, at sharply 8:45 London time. You can watch it directly from Imam Hussein TV, Sky satellite, frequency 789.
