To speak of Ali Ibn Abi Talib—cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muḥammad, fourth caliph of Islam and first in the line of Shiʿi Imams—is to speak of the quintessential spirituality of the Islamic tradition. For in this seminal figure of nascent Islam, one finds an integral expression of the two fundamental sources of Islamic spirituality, the Qurʼānic revelation and the inspired Sunna of the Prophet.2 By his Sunna we do not mean simply the outward imitation of the Prophet’s actions—a reductionism all too prevalent in our times— rather, we mean the spiritual substance of the prophetic perfection to which the Qur’ān itself refers: ‘Verily, thou art of a tremendous nature’ (68: 4). The Prophet’s words and deeds express but do not exhaust this spiritual substance. The inner assimilation of this substance, rather than the merely formal imitation of the words and deeds, is the goal of every spiritually inclined Muslim. There is a profound affinity between the believer’s soul and the prophetic nature, a mysterious proximity that goes beyond time and space, as expressed in the verse: ‘The Prophet is closer to the believers than they are to themselves’ (33: 6). The Prophet, thus, outwardly manifests the perfection which the spiritually sensitive believer intuits, to some degree or another, as determining the very essence of his or her own soul (Source: Rememberance and Justice).
Imamate Culture in Modern Persia: Shia Islam and Cultural Developments in Iran
