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🌺 A Shi’ite Anthology 🌺
Part One
On the Unity of God
A follower of the Islamic religion must first accept the testimony of faith: "There is no god but God" (la ilaha illa-llah). This profession of God's Unity is Islam's first pillar (rukn). All else depends upon it and derives from it.
But what does it mean to say that there is no god but God? For Islam, the manner in which the believer answers this question displays the depth to which he understands his religion. And, paraphrasing a hadith of the Prophet often quoted in Sufi texts, one might say that there are as many ways of understanding the meaning of this profession as there are believers.1
Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of men have understood the meaning and implications of professing God's Unity. Theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, even to some degree the natural sciences, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid, "To profess that God is One." Some of the most productive of the intellectual schools which have attempted to explain the meaning of tawhid have flourished among Shi'ites.
Many historians have looked outside of Islam to find the inspiration for Islam's philosophical and metaphysical expositions of the nature of God's Unity. Such scholars tend to relegate anything more than what could derive - that is, in their view from a "simple bedouin faith" to outside influence.
Invariably they ignore the rich treasuries of wisdom contained in the vast corpus of Shi'ite hadith literature pertaining to Islam's first centuries, i.e., the sayings of the Imams who were the acknowledged authorities in the religious sciences not only by the Shi'ites but also by the Sunnis. Even certain sayings of the Prophet which provide inspiration for the Imams have been ignored. In particular, the great watershed of Islamic metaphysical teachings, Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law and the Shi'ites' first Imam, has been largely overlooked.
In the following selections from Bihar al-anwar, fifteen out of hundreds that can be found in Shi'ite sources, the reader will see the seeds for much of later Islamic metaphysical speculation. It will be noticed that the style of the hadiths varies little from the Prophet himself to the eighth Imam, the last from whom large numbers of such sayings have been handed down. The most important sources for such hadiths, i.e., the Prophet, the first, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Imams, are all represented.
💠💠@AbodeofWisdom 💠💠💠
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💠💠💠💠﷽💠💠💠💠💠
🌺 A Shi’ite Anthology 🌺
Part One
On the Unity of God
A follower of the Islamic religion must first accept the testimony of faith: "There is no god but God" (la ilaha illa-llah). This profession of God's Unity is Islam's first pillar (rukn). All else depends upon it and derives from it.
But what does it mean to say that there is no god but God? For Islam, the manner in which the believer answers this question displays the depth to which he understands his religion. And, paraphrasing a hadith of the Prophet often quoted in Sufi texts, one might say that there are as many ways of understanding the meaning of this profession as there are believers.1
Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of men have understood the meaning and implications of professing God's Unity. Theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, even to some degree the natural sciences, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid, "To profess that God is One." Some of the most productive of the intellectual schools which have attempted to explain the meaning of tawhid have flourished among Shi'ites.
Many historians have looked outside of Islam to find the inspiration for Islam's philosophical and metaphysical expositions of the nature of God's Unity. Such scholars tend to relegate anything more than what could derive - that is, in their view from a "simple bedouin faith" to outside influence.
Invariably they ignore the rich treasuries of wisdom contained in the vast corpus of Shi'ite hadith literature pertaining to Islam's first centuries, i.e., the sayings of the Imams who were the acknowledged authorities in the religious sciences not only by the Shi'ites but also by the Sunnis. Even certain sayings of the Prophet which provide inspiration for the Imams have been ignored. In particular, the great watershed of Islamic metaphysical teachings, Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law and the Shi'ites' first Imam, has been largely overlooked.
In the following selections from Bihar al-anwar, fifteen out of hundreds that can be found in Shi'ite sources, the reader will see the seeds for much of later Islamic metaphysical speculation. It will be noticed that the style of the hadiths varies little from the Prophet himself to the eighth Imam, the last from whom large numbers of such sayings have been handed down. The most important sources for such hadiths, i.e., the Prophet, the first, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Imams, are all represented.
💠💠@AbodeofWisdom 💠💠💠
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