BismilAllah Al Rahman Al Raheem,
I decided to write about my thoughts of misconceptions about Shia Islam, which are a lot wal hamduAllah, I might be unable to discuss them all but I will try my best to clarify as much as I can, inshAllah.
Let me first introduce Shia Islam to you, many people might never have fully understand the truly Shia Islam and their belief, even Muslims from other sects within Islam. I will not talk about the possible reasons behind this as that’s not the aim of my post today.
If you want to learn more about Shia Islam, their belief and the difference between shia and Sunni, then I recommend you to read the book called “Shia and their Beliefs”, by Imam Mohammed Shirazi, a very useful book which discusses all the basic things you need to know about Shia Islam in general.
Here is a Pdf document of it: http://imamshirazi.com/shi’ism%20and%20the%20shi’a.pdf
To introduce you the genealogical tree of our twelve holy imams here is another Pdf document: http://www.albouraq.org/ahloulbayt/imam.pdf
And to build a complete understanding of the concept of God/Allah from a Shia perspective I recommend you to read the book called “Divine Justice or the problem of Evil”, by Javad Shayvard. This book is truly an amazing piece of writing. And here is the Pdf document: http://www.wofis.com/asset/Books/013.pdf
If you’re not someone who enjoys reading and prefers listen and watching videos here you have an online lecture of Hajj Hassanain Rajab who will introduce you to Shia islam in hour time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOHDyU0nz_k
If you’re still not satisfied by all those links that I have provided you with then I recommend to you do some future research on http://www.al-islam.org/ which is simply “The Shia wiki leaks” today.
Now it’s time to write down a list of questions that mostly will be fired on any Shia..
- Why do Shia Curse/send Lan3na on some sahaba?
- Why do Shia pray on stone/Turba?
- Do Shia have a different Quran?
- Why Do Shia hate Aisha?
- Why do Shia beat themselves and mourn a whole month about Imam Hussain (as)?
- What is Mut’aa marriage? Isn’t it a Bidaa?
- Why do Shia not fold their hands meanwhile praying?
And so many other questions.. I can’t remember them all, but those are basically the most asked questions and discussed issues. You should think that after all those years we as Shia and Sunni have sort out all those misconceptions and released ourselves from ignorance and overcome all those obstacles. No, we haven’t, and maybe we will never will.
There are so many websites and video channels on the internet where I see Shia or Sunnis hating and insulting each other publicly, which is really sad. I think we should respect each other despite of differences and opinions, as imam Ali (as) said Man is either your brother in religion or your brother in humanity”.
Imam Ali (as) also talked about ignorance and said that people could be put into four sections, there are people who know that they don’t know, and there are people who don’t know that they don’t know, and then you would also have people who know that they know and people who don’t know that they know. « This personally helps me to understand people I come across more..
However this post is mainly to tell people to put aside their pride and learn and do some research to prevent all those misconceptions and release themselves from ignorance and unneeded hatred.
Thanks to whoever has read this post, I hope you enjoyed it!
