Ali Ibn Abi Talib - Volume 2 of 2

'Ali ibn Abi Ttlib 337
to be separate from the Muslims because of the issue of imamate. He
said: "We do not have either a God or a Prophet or an Imam in
common with them, because they say that their Lord is the one
Whose Prophet Muhammad (gJ is, and his successor who came after
him was Abu Bakr, but we do not believe in that Lord or in that
Prophet; rather we say that the Lord whose Prophet's successor was
Abu Bakr is not ow Lord, and that Prophet is not our Prophet."289
So imamate is at the same level as prophethood, if not greater.
It is the basic foundation of religion, in their view. Hence the ruling
of the Twelver Shia against anyone who denied the imamate of any
one of their twelve Imams gave the final shape to their extremism, as
they deemed him to he a disbeliever who was doomed to spend
eternity in hell, and they included in their curses and rulings of
apostasy all Muslim groups except the Twelvers. They included in
their denunciation as disbelievers all of the following:
3.1.1. Their denunciation of the Companions (&)
The hooks of the RZifidi Shia are filled with curses and
condemnation as disbelievers for those with whom Allah (B) is
pleased and who are pleased with Him: the Muh2jireen and An&
those who were present at Badr, those who swore allegiance to the
Prophet (&) in the pledge of Radwk, and the rest of the
Companions, with only a very few exceptions who can be counted on
the fingers of one hand. After it appeared in their books and became
widely known, this became one of the issues that could not he
concealed by means of taqiyyah.z90
Some of the scholars who studied Shiite sects and groups
examined this issue among the Twelver Shia. AI-QZdi 'Abdul-Jabb2r
said: "As for the Imamis, they are of the view that the way to prove
the imamate of the twelve Imams is by means of the clear text that
denounces as disbelievers those who deny it, as they must be