1.Succession of the HolyProphet and the event of Ghadir e Khum
2.The ETERNAL succession or Wilaya of the HolyProphet for all times to come,( includingspace age and beyond space age) in the august personalities of the Imams of the Time or the Ulu’l-amrsof their times.
3.The divinely inspired succession and not the electedsuccession, which was in the past, which is in the present and which will continue in the future, till eternity,whatever the epoch/time in which Islam is.
ETERNAL succession is synonymous to ETERNAL GUIDANCE, THE PERFECT RELIGION and the concept of Eternal Guidance has been encapsulated in Ayat un Noor of the Holy Quran.
“I appeal to every reader, whether Muslim or not, to accept the spirit of this verse in its entirety”(:Maulana Sultan Muhammad Shah)
Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star; it is lit from a blessed tree, an Olive neither of east nor of the west, the oil of which would well-nigh give light though no fire touched it,-light upon light;-Allah guides to His light whom He pleases; and Allah strikes out parables for men; and Allah all things doth know.(CHAPTER XXIV “Light,” 35)
All Islamic schools of thought accept it as a fundamental principle that for centuries, for thousands of years before the advent of Mohammed, there arose from time to time messengers, illumined by Divine Grace, for and among those races of the earth which had sufficiently advanced intellectually to comprehend such a message. Thus Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets of Israel are universally accepted by Islam. Muslims indeed know no limitation merely to the Prophets of Israel; they are ready to admit that there were similar Divinely inspired messengers in other countries, GautamBuddha, Shri Krishna and Shri Ram in India, Socrates in Greece, the wise man of China and many other sages and saints among peoples and civilizations, traces of which we have lost. Thus man’s soul has never been left without a specially inspired messenger from the soul that sustains, embraces and is the universe. Then what need was there for a Divine revelation to Mohammed ?
The answer of Islam is precise and clear. In spite of its great spiritual strength, Jewish monotheism has retained two characteristics which render it essentially different from Islamic monotheism: God has remained, in spite of all, a national and racial God for the children of Israel, and His personality is entirely separate from its supreme manifestation, the Universe.In far-distant countries such as India and China, the purity of the Faith in the one God had been so vitiated by polytheism, by idolatry and even by a pantheism which was hardly distinguishable from atheism that these popular and folklore religions bore little resemblance to that which emanated from the true and pure Godhead. Christianity lost its strength and meaning for Muslims in that it saw it great and glorious founder not as a man but as God incarnate in man, as God made Flesh. Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word’s revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God’s person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam’s basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism…..
I now come to the divergence of the streams of thought. The Sunnis are the people of the Sunna or tradition. Their Kalama or profession of faith is “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the Apostle of God.” To this the Shias add: “And Ali, the companion of Mohammed, is the Vicar of God.” Etymologically the word “Shia” means either a stream or a section……..
The Prophet died without appointing a Khalif or successor. The Shia school of thought maintains that although direct Divine inspiration ceased at the Prophet’s death, the need of Divine guidance continued and this could not be left merely to millions of mortal men, subject to the whims and gust of passion and material necessity, capable of being momentarily but tragically misled by greed, by oratory, or by the sudden desire for material advantage. These dangers were manifest in the period immediately following our Holy Prophet’s death. Mohammed had been, as I have shown, both a temporal and a spiritual sovereign. The Khalif or successor of the Prophet was to succeed him in both these capacities; he was to be both Emir-al-Momenin or “Commander of the true believers” and Imam-al-Muslimin or “spiritual chief of the devout.” Perhaps an analogy from the Latin, Western world will make this clearer: he would be Supreme Pontiff as well as Imperator or temporal ruler…………
Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, the husband of his beloved and only surviving child, Fatimah, his first convert, his bold champion in many a war, who the Prophet in his lifetime said would be to him as Aaron was to Moses, his brother and right-hand man, in the veins of whose descendants the Prophet’s own blood would flow, appeared destined to be that true successor; and such had been the general expectation of Islam. The Shias have therefore always held that after the Prophet’s death, Divine power, guidance and leadership manifested themselves in Hazrat Ali as the first Imam or spiritual chief of the devout. The Sunnis, however, consider him the fourth in the succession of Khalifs to temporal power……….
The Imam is thus the successor of the Prophet in his religious capacity; he is the man who must be obeyed and who dwells among those from whom he commands spiritual obedience…The Sunnis have always held that this authority is merely temporal and secular, and is exerted only in the political sphere; they believe therefore that it appertains to any lawfully constituted political head of a state, to a governor or to the president of a republic…..The Shias say that this authority is all-pervading and is concerned with spiritual matters also, that it is transferred by inherited right to the Prophet’s successors of his blood……….
First it must be understood that, though these fundamental ideals are universally accepted by Muslims, there does not exist in Islam and there has never existed any source of absolute authority; we have no Papal Encyclical to propound and sanction a dogma, such as Roman Catholics possess, and no Thirty-nine Articles like those which state the doctrinal position of the Church of England…….
The prophet Mohammed had two sources of authority, one religious which was the essential one of his life, and the other secular which, by the circumstances and accidents of his career, became joined to his essential and Divinely inspired authority in religion……..
According to the Sunni school the majority of Muslims the Prophet’s religious authority came to an end at his death, and he appointed no successor to his secular authority. According to Sunni teaching, the faithful, the companions of the Prophet, the believers, elected Abu Bakr as his successor and his Khalif; but Abu Bakr assumed only the civil and secular power.No one had the authority to succeed to the religious supremacy, which depend on direct Divine inspiration, because the Prophet Mohammed and the Koran declared definitely that he was the final messenger of God, the Absolute…….
Thus, say the Sunnis, it was impossible to constitute an authority similar to that of the Papacy; it remained for the Faithful to interpret the Koran, the example and the sayings of the Prophet, not only in order to understand Islam but to ensure its development throughout the centuries……
Fortunately the Koran has itself made this task easy, for it contains a number of verses which declare that Allah speaks to man in allegory and parable……..
Thus the Koran leaves the door open for all kinds of possibilities of interpretation so that no one interpreter can accuse another of being non-Muslim. A felicitous effect of this fundamental principle of Islam that the Koran is constantly open to allegorical interpretation has been that our Holy Book has been able to guide and illuminate the thought of believers, century after century, in accordance with the conditions and limitations of intellectual appreciation imposed by external influences in the world. It leads also to a greater charity among Muslims, for since there can be no cut-and-dried interpretation, all schools of thought can unite in the prayer that the Almighty in His infinite mercy may forgive any mistaken interpretation of the Faith whose cause is ignorance or misunderstanding…………
I am trying to put before my Western readers, not the doctrine of the Ismaili sect to which I belong, not Shia doctrine, nor the teachings of the Sufi school of Islamic mysticism, of men such as JalaleddinRoumi or BayazidBostami, nor even the views of certain modern Sunni interpreters who, not unlike certain Christian sects, look for literal guidance in the Koran as Christians of these sects find it in the Old and New Testaments; but the main and central Sunni stream of thought, whose source is in the ideas of the school founded by al-Ghazali and whose influence and teaching have flowed on from century to century……… ( Various Excerpts from Islam the religionofmy ancestors, Memoirs of Agakhanlll).
I have posted the following articles for perusal of readers:
1)Full article on history of human rights from the most ancient to date,
2)An article on history of Papacy, showing interferencein PapacyElection,influenced by externalfactors ( not DivinelyInspired)
3) Various Papal Bulls, lntercaetera, Romanus Pontifex, Dum Diversas, Bull of excommunication, Treaty of Tordesellas, Papal Bulldozers for readers to evaluate the BLUNDERS COMMITTED BY POPES, as Human errors of their own and not Christianity or Christ, because the Papal office is an elected office and not Divinely Inspired unlike the succession of the Holy Prophet, the Wilaya of the Holy Prophet, THE DIVINELY INSPIRED OFFICE OF THE IMAM STARTING FROM HAZRAT ALI TO THE PRESENT OFFICE OF THE 49TH IMAM, SHAH KARIM AL HUSSEINY. (Light upon Light- Sura Noor).
Before Portugal and TheIsmailiImamat signed the instrument for establishing the seat of IsmailiImamat in Lisbon, Portugal had to have a CONCORDAT with the Vatican and had to address the following major issues: 1) Separationof the Church/religionand State.2) Promulgation of Freedomof ReligiousActand protection of places of worshipby Portugal
3)Protection of humanrightsand womens’ rights from threat of religion. 4) Give up patronageof the Far East territories(given to Portugalby Papal Bulls).
5)Vatican and Portugalto work within religiousfreedomfor benefit of common good and duty to building a societypromoting humandignity and peace. Promoting the dignity of mankind, justice and peace and transparency
The lsmaililmamat and Portugal had to signpreviousseveral accords before signingthe final accord.Accords were signed in 2005,2008,and 2009 before Portugal welcomed the establishment of seat of Ismaili Imamat in June 2015. (expressed in speech of MaulanaHazir Imam in the Portuguese Parliament on 10th July 2018)
When Hazir Imam received the Keys to City of Porto, he said “ I will use the keys to open doors to happiness, doors to peace, doors to unity, and doors to human progress, without making Copies”. (May 2nd 2019 –Porto, Portugal)
Another Excerpt from speech of MaulanaHazir Imam.“duties of the lmam is leadership in spiritual realm for all Imams, whether they are Sunni or Shia, the responsibility, a calling to worldly affairs, improving quality of human life “(Harvard,November12th2015)
In his Silver Jubilee address, Nairobi on 5th October 1982, MaulanaHazir Imam made some extremelyimportant points.He said “ lslam is a faith that is eternal. It is not a faith of the past, it is a faith of the past, but also a faith of the present and a faith of the future.
The concept of Islam which is eternity in the world of the past world of today and world of tomorrow.
Some of you havereferredto me as the Imamof the AtomicAge,but l am your 49thlmamand there willbe lmams in the future and the age will not be Atomic, it may be the Space Age and maybe further than the Space Age.
That is why you have the lmam of the Time to guide you, direct you SO THAT INTERPRETATION OF THE FAITH AT THAT TIME IN AN ETERNAL CONTEXT.
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SPACE THE FINAL FRONTIER……………………..
AND BEYOND……………………….
HERE WE COME…………………………..
THE SPACE RACE HAS ALREADY STARTED………………………