Grand Ayatollah Shirazi: “Faith is not complete without accepting Imamate and Wilayat”

The daily scholarly meeting of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi was held on Monday, the 4th of Safar. In this session, like the previous meetings, the Supreme Religious Authority answered the questions of the attendees about various jurisprudential issues.

Grand Ayatollah Shirazi pointed out that the acceptance of anything is dependent on conditions, and said: “If La Ilaha Ill-Allah is only uttered by the tongue, it is not enough; rather there are many other conditions for the acceptance of faith and monotheism. For example, it is said to pray in order to achieve eternal redemption, but the conditions for this prayer to be accepted are having ablution, facing the Qiblah, and wearing clean clothes. So, unless these conditions are met, the prayer will not be accepted.”

The Grand Marja then cited the famous Silsilat al-Dhahab Hadith, or the Golden Chain Hadith, narrated by Imam Reza, peace be upon him, “The Phrase There is no god but Allah is my strong fortress, whoever enters it will be safe from my Chastisement,” and said: Imam Reza, peace be upon him, adds a condition to this hadith by saying “by conditions and I am one of the conditions,” that is, monotheism has conditions and Imam is the condition for the acceptance of the “Word of Tawheed”.
He also referred to the first sermon of Amir al-Mu’minin after his apparent caliphate and said: In that sermon, Imam Ali, peace be upon him, points out in the same way that God Almighty does not accept monotheism without belief in Prophethood, that is, if someone says that he accepts monotheism but does not accept prophethood, God says, I don’t want this monotheism. Similarly, Imam Ali concludes, if someone accepts monotheism and prophethood, but does not accept Willayah and Imamate, then God does not accept this either, because those are pre-conditions for accepting monotheism.