Overstatement or Understatement; A Critique of the book Maktab dar Farayand e Takamol

Abstract

In religious teachings of Imamiyyah, both overstatement and understatement about Imams are forbidden, which are rooted in incorrect knowledge of states of Imamate and Imam's existential position in the creation. The present paper criticizes a part of the book "School in the Process of Perfection" in terms of its methodology, in which the author understates about Imams when introducing them. The author believes that some of the intellectual foundations of Imamiyyah (such as foreknowledge and infallibility of Imams) were not discussed in the first century after Hijra, that Imams were introduced as pious religious scholars, and that these attributes were proposed by companions and perfected, evolved, and popularized among the followers of Imamiyyah in subsequent centuries, while they were regarded as the cases of overstatement at the age of Imams themselves. The paper, however, proves how the honorable author reasons fallaciously and fails to understand the evidence and documents correctly and directly due to his semantic errors, lack of a comprehensive understanding of narrations, and misunderstanding them.

Keywords

• imamate
• overstatement
• understatement
• infallibility
• foreknowledge
• modarresi tabatabaii