Iranian Salafist Imamate Thought evisited

The present paper attempts to deal with studying the imamate-oriented views of the Iranian Salafist trend which is a revisionist current in the Shiite thought and its being identical with the main Twelver Shiite creed. The paper deals with a number of aspects of the problem, that is, definition of imamate, the major and minor qualifications of the Infallible Imam, and the process of making of imamate from their perspective. Having defined five key terms from the lexicon of the terminologies Twelver Shiism uses for and in the case of imamate, it shows the reasons for the opposition of the Salafist trend with these concepts. As for the main attributes of imamate, this paper deals with the rejection of the principle of the Divine selection and nomination, the knowledge and infallibility of the Infallible Imams, and their (i.e., Salafists’) skepticism over the primacy of Imam Ali over the other three caliphs who were contemporary with him. As for the minor characteristics, responsibilities, and offices of the Infallible Imams, the trend in question has cast certain doubts, too. They do so to make use of the Quran and the human intellect as their supports. They finally come up with rejecting the Divine nomination and the absence of any explicit text on the succession of the Infallible Imams. Therefore, the present paper attempts to render a well-documented report of these constitutive elements in the array of the beliefs of their Salafist trend so as to picture their correspondence with as well as their opposition against the mainstream of the Twelver Shiite doctrines