A Review of 'Allāma Tehrāni's Jurisprudential View about Using the Term "Imām" for the fallible Characters

Subject Areas : فقه و مبانی حقوق

Mehrdad Hasan Beigi ¹ , Mohammad Hassan Vakili ^{2 *}

1 - PhD., Student, Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Imam Sadegh University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Prof. Mashhad Seminary; Strategic Institute of Islamic Sciences and Education, Mashhad, Iran

Received: 2022-12-23 Accepted : 2023-03-10 Published : 2022-12-22

Keywords: Nā'eb al-Imām, Fallible, Welāyat-e Faqih, Imām, 'Allāma Tehrāni, Islamic government,

Abstract :

'Allāma Tehrāni does not permit using the term Imām for the fallible characters and insists on the dignity of this usage. He believes that the term Imām in its nominal (not descriptive) application is solely used for the infallible Imāms in Shi'ite culture so using some titles in their non-idiomatic meaning is illegitimate in the bright religion (of Islam). The purpose of the present study is to delve deep into the jurisprudential documents of this viewpoint. The main statement of the problem in this research is to explore the documents in terms of this jurisprudential doctrine. The research method is descriptive-analytic and the results showed that with reference to the substantiation of desecrating jurisprudential dignity, 'Allāma refutes to attribute this usage to some reasons that allow that. Another reason denotes some narrations which avoid using specialized terms for the fallible characters in religion. With reference to the possibility of making mistakes and fallibility of Valiy-e Faqih and based on the fact that Imāmat is exclusively for Imām Mahdi during the Age of Absence and Wilāyat-e Faqih is under the guardianship of Imām Mahdi, he believes that the term "Nā'eb al-Imām" can only be used for the Valiy-e Faqih.        

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