REL 137g 1st Edition Lecture 21 Current Lecture Shiism is dedicated to correcting the history that they deem is incorrect The succession of caliphs after Muhammad s death Done through political means Period of the Safirs or Lesser Occultation They say the 11th imam who left no heir did actually have a son But fearful for his son s life he hid the boy away There are individuals who relay information from this new imam to the community He represents the doctrines and views of the imam with total reliability They are looked back upon as heroes who saved the movement Lesser because the imam is still alive even if he is not present in the community 4 safirs Not a family dynasty Greater Occultation 329 941 Premised on the idea that even if we accept the claims of the safirs even if he had existed he would now be dead The 4th safir announces that the 12th imam is no longer physically accessible He s dead He is now in occultation somewhere between this world and the next No one has access to that place He will return at the end of time 12th imam becomes known as Muhammad the Awaited 12er shism 3 competing ideas concerning nature of the 12th imam Tafwid Delegation In order to have a perfect understanding of the religion the imam must also have a perfect understanding of reality Not shirk because the imam gets this understanding from God Not through any personal quality God delegates this understanding to him Taqsir Short selling In answer to extremism there is still a distinct line between God and the imam Ghulun Extremism Major clash in shiism in the 18th century between 2 groups Akhbari reports They believed the only reliable information must be traced back to the imams The imam reports are absolutely equal in authority to the statements of the Prophet Usuli Disagreed believed in interpretive methods that could produce conclusions that are close enough in approximating the infallibility of the imams Not infallible but they are close enough to be reliable Great proponents of ijtihad Akhbaris rejected Usulis as being too close to Sunnism Came to intellectual blows The Usulis defeated the Akhbaris Shiism turns a new page Results in wilayat al fiqih The basis of Iran The authority of the jurists It can be assumed that their conclusions reflect the conclusions of the imam and the Prophet Not infallible but good enough Ayatollah The highest rank of jurist one can attain Supposed to be equal but one emerges as having the final say in all religious issues Religious leader but not the imam They are still waiting for the return of the 12th imam In the meantime they have an imam who is not infallible Zaydism Differ with the 12ers when it comes to the 5th imam They hold him to be the imam Anyone who comes from the Prophet s family can be imam The imam must actively promote the cause of the Shiite community They do not subscribe to any notion of a hidden imam They continue to this day Very close to the sunnis almost indistinguishable With the exception of rifts in the early period about who should be the ruler Do not subscribe to taqiyya