The Psychology and Theology of the

SHIA CULT
Being the Second Major Doctrinal School of Islam

Researched & Written by

SYED M. WAQAS

BAB-UL-ILM RESEARCH FOUNDATION

(BIRF INTERNATIONAL)
www.birf.weebly.com

The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult

Shias, the Protestants of Islambut Catholics in their icon and saint worshipare one of the two main
factions of the doctrinal world of Islam. The Shia doctrine is strictly based upon the concept of the
divinely ordained political legitimacy of the Prophet Muhammads scion. The core teachings of the Shia
doctrine do not accept the notion of the essential equality of the Companions and maintain a
fundamental difference between the so-called divinely chosen (the Imams) and the general
Companions. These Imams have every right to exercise the Amr, the Authority, over the rest in both
religious and worldly spheres. Thus, it gives enough space to found a political hierarchy of the type of
dynastic rule, as practiced in monarchical regimes, within Islamic system of faith. Their central belief
publishes Prophet Muhammad as the precursor of a hierarchy of several Imams,1 (politico-spiritual)
Divinely-Ordained Leaders, and the imparter of divine wisdom in the originator of the station of
Imamah, Ali.
The Shia movement (also written as Shi'ah) allegedly began as a protest against the mainstream Islam in
the mid of 7th century CE. Traditionally it is believed that the cult took hidden birth in the wake of the
election of Islam's first Righteous Caliph, Abu Bakr. The Shia doctrine has always declared this election
'null and void'. Shias believe that the right of becoming the Commander of the Faithful (Arabic Amir alMumineen) was divinely vouchsafed for 'Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet (PBUH), and his
heirs in succession after his death.
The Shias believe that God commanded Prophet Muhammad to announce the final messsage of his
ministry, which they maintain is the proclamation of the period of Imamah, Spiritual Leadership. This
period would begin with Ali. The Quranic verse cited among the Shias to expound the foundational
truth of the Imamah rational is from the fifth Surah of the Quran, Al-Maidah.2
O Messenger! Make known that which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord, for if thou do it
not, thou wilt not have conveyed His message. Allah will protect thee from mankind. Lo! Allah
guideth not the disbelieving folk.
(Surah Al-Maidah 5:67)
They also quote a Prophetic Saying of obscure origin to establish the evidence of their claim. This
particular Hadith is known among the Shias as Hadeeth-e-Ghadeer. It reads:
O people, Allah is my Lord and I am the lord of the believers. I am worthier of believers than
themselves. Of whomsoever I had been Master (Mawla), Ali here is to be his Master. O
Allah, be a supporter of whoever supports him (Ali) and an enemy of whoever opposes him and
divert the Truth to Ali.3

The doctrine of 12 Imams is the one strongest among the Shias, and the orthodox Shia creed is called The Twelver
Creed. More details have been given in the coming pages of this paper.
2
Al-Suyuti from Dur al-Manthur based on the authority of Ibn Assakir, Ibn Mardawayh and Ibn Abi Hatim who
narrate from Abu Sa`id al-Khudri.
3
This Hadeeth also appears in the Sunni sources, whereof the most prominent is Jami al-Tirmidhi, Kitab alManaaqib, Hadeeth No. 3713

The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult

After the proclamation of this new era of the Spiritual Leadership, Imamah, there came down the final
verse of the Holy Quran immediately, which declared Islam being sealed into perfection on that day.
Today I have perfected your religion and completed my favour upon you, and I was satisfied that
Islam be your religion.
(Surah Maidah 5:3)
Thus, the Shias claim that their faith rests on the foundations derived from the Quran and the Hadith
with a particular hermeneutics of Shia slant. However, the history tells us something contrary to what
the Shias believe about their faith. It marks a certain period of the post-Revelation era being the origin
and development of the Shia doctrine.
Historically speaking, the very death of the Prophet of Islam can be deemed as the event of the friction
of the Muslim Ummah. The Companions of the Prophet, nevertheless, did not get into any serious
conflict and viewed the institution of Caliphate in the light of the Prophets Sunnah. This resolved the
issues without much delay and none among the Companions asserted the right to be the Caliph. The
protest movement started much later with some foreign usurpers who voiced the differences in order to
reap the harvest of personal political and economic interests. Moreover, another reason for such a
protest against the Orthodox (i.e. Righteous) Caliphate was ethnic and geographic. New Muslims from
the Persian territory did not want to see the Arabs as their masters. Therefore, they watered the politics
of parties and continued to add fuel to the fire.
The protest grew stronger with the passage of time primarily under the Umayyad Dynasty, particularly
in the wake of various events of hostility and violence in which individuals closely or distantly relating to
the Prophets Household (Arabic Ahl al-Bait) were assassinated. After the tragic event of Karbala in 684
CE, when Hussain, the revered grandson of Prophet Muhammad, and his family were assassinated, the
crude Shia movement quickly assumed the shape of an organized religious group in its own right. The
assumption of a distinct religious identity with its own ideological fountainhead was chiefly a reaction to
the political hegemony of the Umayyad Dynasty. Once having come to its own, the Shia doctrine
attempted to trace its origin in the political scenario developed after Prophet Muhammads death in 632
CE. Since the whole ideological growth of the Shia doctrine took place under Umayyad rule, it became
inherent in the Shia psychology to detest and rebuke as a religious obligation everything that belongs
either to the Umayyads or to those who, allegedly, did not side with Ali and his successors. On the
whole, seeking after its doctrinal nature, the Shia cult can be declared a political school of thought.
Soon afterwards, however, the purity of the political character was lost into the religious fervor of the
protestant-adherents and a new school of religio-political thought got birth from the very political
psychology of the Shias.
The Shias further have three main factions within the cult itself, namely Ithna Ashariyyah (the
Twelvers), Zaidiyyah (the followers of Zaid ibn Ali Zain al-Aabideen), and Ismailiyyah (the followers of
Ismail ibn Jafar al-Saadiq). However, the major faction has always been the followers of the Twelver
Doctrine. This schism of the Shias was yet again based upon the politics of the cult, for the conflicts of
succession always haunted their unity.

The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult

A critical psycho-analysis of the Shia ideology will systematically strip it of its theological foundations
and expose the obsoleteness of its doctrine. In fact, the Shia doctrine is the most frustrated and
outdated doctrine among all major Muslim paradigms. The Shia movement, originally, began as a
protest against the political usurpation of non-Hashmites, i.e. those not directly coming of the tribe of
the Prophet, after the Prophets death. Therefore, the movement owes its raison detre to the ideology
of God-directed and God-permeated politics. They have always believed that Imam, a divinely
appointed spiritual leader of the rank of a Prophet, will lead and guide Ummah politically as well as
spiritually. In other words, the sacred and the secular have been coalesced in the Shia doctrine in
order to baptize their assorted materials as a self-consistent holy idea.
Twelver Shias have always been the major faction of the Shias, and they still dominate the Shia faith in
the world. The Hadeeth that supports the doctrine of the twelve Caliphs is called the Hadeeth al-Ithna
Ashar Khalifah, Prophet Saying for the Succession of Twelve Caliphs.4 One of the Shia sources reports
the canonicity of the Twelver doctrine from the fifth Imam, Muhammad al-Baaqir:
Jabir said: I asked Imam Muhammad al-Baaqir about the meaning of this (Quranic) verse: "Verily
the number of the months (9:36)." He breathed long (out of sorrow) and said: "O Jabir, the year is
my grandfather, the Messenger of Allah, and the members of his family are its months who are the
twelve Imams, and are (naming the Imams one by one). They are the Proofs of Allah on His
creation, and Trusties of His revelations and His knowledgeso wrong not your souls in them' and
believe in all of them to be guided.5
The Twelvers remained an esoteric sect until 17th century CE with its mystery practicesthat may well
label Shiaism as a mystery cult of the nature of the ancient Near Eastern cults. The real test of the
Shias approached twice in the history of Islam: firstly in Egypt when the Ismailis came to power in 9th
century and then in Iran in 17th century when the Safvids erected their dynastic rule. The Shias, hence,
achieved first time ever what they had always dreamed of as a distinct religious sect: the political
authority. However, the inception of Shia regimes both in Egypt and Iran brought no change in the
existing theology of the movement whatsoever and thus could not deliver. It continued to mourn and
protest the heinous usurpation of the Companions of the Prophet who had neglected the legitimacy of
Ali and his descendants. They did not abandon to mourn their political deprivation despite having
achieved it, namely the long-desired authority and a sovereign state to practice it. Now they could plant
the ideology of the Shiaism in its pragmatic form, as was previously claimed. Instead, the protest and
mourning practices, having been institutionalized, took solid religious shape, as they began to be
intensely practiced after the declaration of Fiqh al-Jafar as the state-religion, particularly, in Iran.
The shallow nature of the doctrine is immediately out when we objectively analyze its political ideology
in the post-Imamat era, which they style as the era of ignorance and disorder. This belief grants Shias a
4

The most authentic Sunni Hadeeth books, Sahih Bukhari, Hadeeth No. 9329 and Sahih Muslim, Hadeeth No.
4483, also assign credibility to the idea of Twelve Leaders/Caliphs. For instance, the Hadeeth from Sahih Muslim
reads: The Messenger of Allah said: This affair (Islam) shall neither pass nor will come to an end while my twelve
caliphs pass in it. All of them will be from Quraysh.
5

Kitab al-Ghaiba, by Shaikh at-Tusi

The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult

most desired opportunity to erect the concept of a messianic deliverer, a Messiah of the kind of Jesus
Christ, called Mahdi, the One Divinely Guided. This end-time savior bears a great deal of
resemblance with the New Testament "Christ" in all major aspects including inception, disappearance
and 2nd coming. Muhammad al-Mahdi, they say, is the Son of 11th Imam, Hasan al-Askari, and he
disappeared during the Abbasid reign in a cave near Samara, Iraq, when the Caliphs forces were
attempting to track him down. The Abbasid Caliph wanted to slay the 6-year old miracle-worker
spiritual leader of the Twelvers, for he feared sedition and rebellion from his party. The whole
conception appears to have been borrowed from Christianity, especially from the versions of Christianity
then extant in Arabia and its surroundings, such as from the Monophysites and Nestorians. Similarly,
there is a strong presence of Gnosticism in the Shia faith particularly regarding the absolute holiness of
the Prophet, his Household, and the Imams as well as in the paradox of the Zaahir, Apparent, and
Baatin, Hidden. Gnosticism precepts are easily traceable in the text of the book associated with Ali,
Al-Nahj al-Balaaghah.
After the disappearance of al-Mahdi, Shias came to believe in two transitions of Mahdi
Disappearance/Occultation they term Ghaibat al-Sughrah (Minor Occultation) and Ghaibat alKubrah (Greater Occultation). The Minor Occultation continued for a little more than half century of
Mahdis disappearance, and a few chosen individuals, four canonized by the Orthodoxy, were believed
to have esoteric connections with him. Here these mouthpieces of Imam Mahdi acted in the fashion of
the Apostles of Christ who Jesus Christ, according to Christian doctrine, chose to express his will.
Mahdi acted in a like manner in the Shia paradigm and chose four such individuals (Arabic al-Nuwaab
al-Arbaa, the Four Leaders) that he was satisfied with to reveal Shia Kerygma. Hence, the will of
the final Imam mattered in every issue of religious as well as worldly import among the Twelver Shias
and it is why the Imam continued issuing his verdicts for a few generations from the lips of his elects.
However, this age of Minor Occultation, all of a sudden, came to an end with the utter stoppage of its
all-powerful hidden communication after 67 years of the Disappearance event. The Imam stopped
revealing himself to anyone after the death of his final Safeer, Ambassador. This, in other words,
meant that Imam Mahdi denounced electing Shia individuals anymore and disowned his community in
toto. Ever since the death of the last Ambassador of Imam in 941 CE, the Shias have been praying as a
religious obligation for the appearance of the Hidden Imam, Al-Mahdi. The Shia Apocalypse will take
place, according to popular belief, at the end of Greater Occultation.
Allama Baqir Majlisi (1616-1698 CE) is credited with the revival of Twelver Doctrine in its modern form.
Allama Baqir's theological reformation brought about a radical transformation within the cult and it
assumed the form of a practicing religion from an esoteric "mystery cult". In fact, there was no
"Ta'ziyyah" before 17th century in the way we see it today; however, it became the central institution
of the cult after the "Majlisi Reformation."
The Shia rationale of Hadeeth radically differs from its counterpart Sunni Hadeeth methodology. They
do not, per se, distinguish between a statement of Prophet Muhammad and the statements of the
twelve Imams in regard to their theological importance. Jafar al-Saadiq, the 6th Shia Imam, is reported
in principal Shia Hadeeth book Kaafi Kulayni as laying out the Shia vision of Hadeeth; he contends that
the words of an Imam are the words of the Prophet and the words of the Prophet are Gods words. We

The Psychology and Theology of the Shia Cult

must do well to bear in mind that Prophet Muhammad appears merely the figurehead of the cult,
whereas Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, is the nucleus of Shia doctrine. The dynamic
mechanics of the cult originate from the sermons of Jafar al-Saadiq, hence the Twelver cult is
jurisprudentially named as Fiqh al-Jafariyyah. The most practical theological books among the Shias
after Quran itself are Kaafi fi Ilm al-Deen by Muhammad ibn Yaqoob al-Kulayni and Man laa
Yahduruhu al-Faqih by Ali ibn Baabawayh Qummi, both written in 10th century. According to both of
these books of Shia Hadeeth discipline, there is a huge debate in Shia doctrine over the survival of the
original Quranwhether or not the Quran survived the age of usurpation and chaos after Prophets
death. One group believes that the Quran is intact and was never tampered with, but its impeccable
knowledge is with the Imamsthat is to say Imam are the infallible exegetes of Quran. On the other
hand, a goodly number believes that the present version of the Glorious Quran is incomplete and its
original, complete copy was the Codex of Ali, which was passed down to his descendant Imams until it
reached the 12th Imam, Al-Mahdi. This original Quran is now in the possession of Imam Mahdi, who, as
the final guardian of the Quran, will return it to the Prophet Muhammad himself.6
Although a number of attempts have been made to systematize Shia theology, it still remains
inconsistent with the major portion of the Quran. Moreover, Shia theology appears self-contradicting
with its paradoxical parlances regarding God, the Prophet, his Household, his Companions and even the
Messianic figure of Mahdi.

Al-Hilaali, Kitaab Sulaym bin Qays, Imams of the Rescued Sect, p.110; Abu Mansur al-Tibrisi, Al-Ihtijaaj, p.81