What Good is the Imam?

islamoyankee

“Whoever says, ‘What good is the Imam? God without an intermediary is enough for me’ plainly forgets that, in speaking of this God who is immediate for him, he can never speak save of the God who reveals Himself to him, of God as he knows Him, in and through the form in which God reveals Himself to him.  Even if he speaks of God as of something impersonal or transpersonal, he does so only of the form shown to him or withheld from him.  Without this mazhar, without this ‘theophanic form’ in which God manifests Himself – in the widest sense of the term – it is impossible even to speak of God.  This form is the “Face” of God, and several texts have already shown us the importance of this theme for Shi’ism.  We have been told that this “Face of God” is the Imam.”

Corbin, Henry. “The Meaning of Imam for Shiʿi Spirituality.” In Shiʿism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality, edited by Seyyed Hossein. Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, 167-187. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. at pg. 170

Related Posts

The Biggest Muslim Capitals in America – The Daily Beast

The Pew numbers are so wrong, that I am amazed they are still being used. We know that there are over 800,000 Muslims in NYC alone, which would mean 1/2 of the US Muslim population is in NYC according to Pew’s numbers. Other than that, the slideshow that goes with the article is amazing. The Biggest Muslim Capitals in America – The Daily Beast. “I think Muslims view the U.S. as a beacon of freedom,” says Farhana Khera, president and executive director of Muslim Advocates, an advocacy organization. According to Pew, two-thirds of the Muslim population was born outside the…

Remembering the Heroism and Ethic of Hazrat Ali (a.s.) in the Persian New Year «

Remembering the Heroism and Ethic of Hazrat Ali (a.s.) in the Persian New Year «. Some months ago when I first wrote this piece, I was thinking about the beginning of Ramadan. Today, a few months on I am thinking about the beginning of Navroz, the Persian New Year. There are beginnings everywhere. The Qur’an begins with the fatihah. There is a tradition that the entirety of the knowledge of the Qur’an can be found in the fatihah; the entire fatihah is contained in the first line, bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim, everything in that phrase is found in bismillah; all of that knowledge is…

ilm – knowledge – yearns to be free

Joi Ito has posted something about making information available on the web. He mentions Ismail Serageldin, who was involved (I don’t know if he still is) with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which of course has relations with ArchNet, which has a great on-line library.