By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

 

“Whoever expects to encounter Allah [should know that] Allah’s [appointed] time will indeed come, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.” (Holy Qur’an 29:5)     

The Omnipresent Creator cannot be encompassed by the eyes of creatures, but what the above Ayah means to say in the Words of Almighty Allah Himself, Who is far too glorious to have shape, form, or place, is the assemblage of all mankind on the Day of Resurrection on which even those who during the transient life of the mortal world had succumbed to such devilish tendencies as disbelief, polytheism, atheism, and denial of the reality of the raising of the dead, will be gathered in the Divine Court for the Final Judgement.  

No wonder the All-Merciful, Whose love and affection for His creation is far more than that of the biological parents through whom He decreed procreation, had sent Prophets as guides, followed by the Infallible Imams, to enable mankind to avoid the pitfalls of perfidy as we proceed towards the straight and unwavering path of salvation.

Today, on the 15th of Dhul-Hijja, the auspicious birth anniversary of one such Divinely-designated Guide, a famous saying from the Last and Greatest of Messengers, Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), regarding the encounter on Judgement Day with the Source of all life, comes to our mind:

“He, who likes to meet Allah (on Resurrection Day) safe, purified, and without fearing the great horror, let him follow you O’ Ali, and follow your two sons Hasan and Husain, and (your grandsons) Ali ibn al-Husain, Muhammad ibn Ali, Ja’far ibn Muhammad, Musa ibn Ja’far, Ali ibn Musa, Muhammad ibn Ali, Ali ibn Muhammad, Hasan ibn Ali, and al-Mahdi the last of them...”

The above is only a part of a lengthy hadith that elaborates on the benefits of love, affection, and obedience to the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), whom the Prophet, on the express commandment of God (Holy Qur’an 5:67), had proclaimed his Vicegerent on the 18th of Dhul-Hijja, 10 AH at Ghadeer-Khom, while returning from his Farewell Hajj Pilgrimage.

The important point to note is that the Prophet clearly specified by name the successors of his Divinely-designated successor, since he knew that a group of his disobedient companions would usurp the political right of Imam Ali (AS) and deprive the Ahl al-Bayt of the caliphate or worldly rule, which would become the prerogative of the unprincipled, the immoral, the unjust and the ungodly.

The narrator of this wonderful hadith from the Prophet that emphasizes the chain of authority in Islam is a member of this elite group itself. He is Imam Ali al-Hadi (AS), the Prophet’s 10th Infallible Heir whose birthday we celebrate every year on Dhul-Hijja 15.

Imam Ali an-Naqi al-Hadi (AS) needs no introduction. The Tenth in line of succession to the Divine Trust proclaimed at Ghadeer-Khom, he was the constant target of the successors of the seditious assembly of Saqifa Bani Sa’da, where the right of political leadership of Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) was so unmanly usurped by persons who had spent the greater part of their life in idolatry and abominable sins.

This was also the reason why his place of eternal rest in Samarra, Iraq, was some years ago blown up by his modern day enemies – the dastardly Salafi terrorists who ought to have realized that they cannot erase from people’s hearts the love and affection of the Chosen Ones of God whom their much more powerful progenitors (Salaf) couldn’t erase with either the swords of their soldiers or the pens of their court mullahs.

The tyrants whose plots to harm Imam Ali al-Hadi (AS) miserably failed were Mu’tasim and his son, Mutawakkil, the self-styled caliphs of the usurper Abbasid regime. Both of these base born – the former a son of a Turkic concubine and the latter a son of a Greek concubine – left no stone unturned to try to tarnish the image of the Ahl al-Bayt.

If Mu’tasim appointed tutors to try to brainwash the 8-year old Imam only to find his appointees learning instead from the God-given wisdom of the boy to whom they were sent to taught, Mutawakkil was exasperated on many an occasion when his ruse to find fault with the Imam badly boomeranged.

In between the stratagems of the caliphs were the academic intrigues of the court mullahs against the Tenth Imam that always ended in defeat in the debates they dared to impose on the successors of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).

One such frustrated pseudo scholar was the Hanafi protagonist, Yahya Ibn Aktham, who decades earlier during the reign of Mamoun, had found himself stuttering for words while unable to answer the questions posed to him by Imam Muhammad at-Taqi al-Jawad (AS), who was then a beardless boy.

Now in his middle age and scared of holding an open public debate with another Infallible Member of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, he posed complicated questions in writing on the assumption that these would not be correctly answered.

To his surprise, however, Imam Hadi (AS), not just provided the correct answers but opened his mind to facts that were beyond Ibn Aktham’s intellect. The following is the Imam’s answers to one of the questions:

“Regarding the prostration of Jacob (AS) and his sons, it was out of their obedience to God and affection for Joseph (AS). It was similar to (God’s orders) to the angels to prostrate to Adam (AS), which, however, was not to worship Adam, but was a sign of their obedience to God and love for Adam (AS). Thus, Jacob the prophet and his sons prostrated themselves as a sign of showing gratitude to God for their reunion with Joseph (AS).

“At that very moment, Joseph the Prophet (AS) had shown thankfulness to God by saying (as the Holy Qur’an relates – 12:101):

“My Lord, You have granted me a share in the kingdom, and taught me the interpretation of dreams. Originator of the heavens and earth! You are my Guardian in this world and the Hereafter! Let my death be in submission [to You] and unite me with the Righteous.”

Imam Hadi (AS), whose Imamate could be roughly divided into two equal parts (about 17 years in Medina and 17 years in Samarra where he was placed under virtual house arrest by the Abbasid regime), shouldered the crucial task of grooming Muslims for the eventual start of the “ghayba” or period of occultation of his yet-to-be-born grandson, the 12th Imam who will rise in the end times as Mahdi al-Qa’em (AS) to cleanse the earth of all vestiges of corruption and oppression by establishing the global government of peace, prosperity and justice.

In view of the guidance of posterity, the 10th Imam bequeathed the famous “Ziyarat al-Jame’at-al-Kabirah” on the God-given merits of the Immaculate Ahl al-Bayt and groomed a great many ulema, who through a solid chain of succession have kept alive the aspirations of the faithful till this day, over a millennium and two centuries later. A passage from the special “Ziyarat-al-Ghadeer”, as taught by Imam Hadi (AS), reads:

“O Allah, bless Your Wali, the Custodian of Your religion, the Executor of justice after Your Prophet, Ali bin Abi Taleb, the Commander of true believers, the Imam of the pious, the Master of guardians…the Successor of Your Prophet over the whole people, his Guardian in life and religion, the Great truthful (Siddiq al-Akbar), the Distinguisher (Farouq al-A’zam) between halal and haram, the Smasher of idols, the Defender of Islam….”