Re-Reflections on Imam Mahdi (lll)

Also published in Daily Trust 

In the second part of his interventional rejoinder that appeared yesterday, Hajiya Bilkisu’s Sheikh continued to ignore the excerpts I quoted in the first part of my rejoinder three weeks ago, from the Shiites’ most recognized reference books, which expose their actual belief that, when their Mahdi emerges he will effectively abolish the holy Qur’an, introduce a new religion and a new judicial system, exhume the prophet’s two leading companions; Abubakr (RA) and Umar (RA) from their graves, burn them down and scatter their ashes to the wind, then he will exhume the prophet’s wife; Aisha (RA) from her grave and flog her, among many other blasphemous acts and atrocities.

Instead, Hajiya’s Sheikh went on quoting some Muslim scholars to prove the prophesied emergence of Mahdi towards the End time but in a way cleverly hinting that the scholars referred to the Shiites’ Mahdi, which was clearly misleading. He simply ignored Muslims’ arguments that, the Shiites’ Mahdi is irreconcilably different from the actual Mahdi prophesied by the prophet Mohammad (pbhu)

It is important to note that, examining the narrative authenticity of the Shiites’ version of Mahdi necessarily entails examining the authenticity of the whole Shi’a creed, religious practices and rituals. After all, the inherent inconsistency in their already very poor criteria in authenticating their narrations and the sheer amount of contradiction that characterizes those narrations have always exposed them to a very complicated methodological dilemma.

For instance, in their most recognized book of reference i.e. Al-Kaafi, Ja’afar As-Sadiq (AS) was falsely reported to have said “After the death of the prophet Mohammad (pbuh) all Muslims (of course excluding members of the prophet’s Household but with the exception of his wives who, according to the Shiites, were not among his Household members) abandoned Islamic religion except only three; Al-Miqdaad bin Al-Aswad, Abu Thar Al-Ghifari and Salman Al-Farisi” (Al-Kaafi, v 8, p 245). This is even though according to some other Shiites’ narrations some four other people later returned to Islam.

By the way, notwithstanding the Shiites’ usual Taqiyya under the pretext of which they reveal what is contrary to their actual belief, the above quoted narration represents their actual belief about the prophet’s companions, their successors and indeed all Muslims who don’t believe in their heretical creed.

Anyway, this narration highlights the Shiites’ biggest dilemma, because it is obvious that, in all their reference books there is no single unbroken chain of narration (sanad-muttasil) of the holy Qur’an from the prophet (pbuh) even through Ali Ibn Abi Talib (AS), for that matter. All the narrators who learnt, collected and disseminated the holy Qur’an with all its different forms of recitation (i.e. Qiraa’at) were all Sunni Muslim narrators, including all the narrators who narrated it through Ali ibn Talib (AS) himself.

This is the reason why the Shiites principal theorisers and regardless of their Taqiyya have always maintained inconsistent stands about the authenticity of the holy Qur’an, since according to them, it was transmitted by and through chains of apostate and unbelieving narrators. For instance, while the holy Qur’an has roughly 6236 verses, the Shiites’ most recognized theoriser i.e. Al-Kulaini claims that “The actual Qur’an revealed unto the prophet Mohammad by angle Jibril contains 17,000 verses” (Al-Kaafi v 2, p 634)

Similarly, the Shiites don’t have a single hadith narration with an unbroken chain of recognized and reliable narrators according to the standard criteria of the Science of Hadith i.e. Mustahul Hadith; a discipline developed by the earlier Sunni Muslim scholars. Abu Mohammad Ramahurmuzi who died in 360 AH was the first person to write in this discipline. More than 600 years later, the Shiites began to realize the ridiculousness of their unfounded sources of narrations; hence some of them began to produce some largely plagiarized works, which they called Mustahul Hadith. 

Sheikh Hassan Al-Ha’iry, a leading Shiite cleric admitted that, "It is well known that nobody among our scholars wrote anything on Diraya (i.e. part of the Science of Hadith that deals with the rules of authenticating hadiths’ chains of narrations) before the Second Marty” i.e. Hassan Al-Amily (died in 965 AH) (Muqtabasul-Athar v3 p73)

Besides, Al-Hurr- Al-amily, another Shiite authority admitted that “The respected Shia top clerics and other Shi’a scholars deliberately accepted and authenticated narratives disseminated by the distrusted, liars and unidentified narrators” (Wasa’ilul-Shi’a v30 p 206) These among other things explain the poor intellectual quality of the Shiites’ reference books. For instance, Nahjul-balaga, the most famous Shi’a book, which is claimed to have contained speeches made by Ali ibn Talib (AS), has no single chain of narration (sanad) between its author; Shareef Al-Radiyy and Ali ibn Abi Talib, even though there were more than 360 years between the death of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the birth of  Shareef Al-Radiyy.

Moreover, Sayyid Kamal Al-Haidari, an Iraqi famous Shi’a cleric admitted that, most of the Shiites’ hadith narratives, 90% as he put it, are originally from Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. (Watch his two video clips below)

After all, the fact that according them, their Mahdi will replace the Qur’an with the book of prophet Dawood (AS), and considering the fact that, six out of the eight Shi’a’s most recognized sources of narrations i.e. Al-Kulaini, Al-Qummi, Al-tousi, Al-Majlisi, Al-Kashani, Al-Tabrasi were all ethnic Persians, also in view of the roles played by the Safavid Persian chauvinists’ empire from 1501-1722 when a large chunk of such purported hadith narrations mysteriously emerged, one can’t help but suspect a grand Judeo-Persian and Zoroastrian conspiracy of being behind the fabrication of such narrations.

Now, back to the unwarranted and diversionary name spelling issue resorted to by Hajiya’s Sheikh when he claimed that I can’t spell my own name correctly. His observation is applicable only when the word in question is written in its original Arabic form. However, since the word is written in English where, phonetically speaking, double consonants in a word are almost often pronounced as a single consonant, his observation is not relevant in this context.