"O Kumayl, do not take knowledge from anyone but us, and you will be of us" — Amirul Mu'minin a.s
Few Islamic terms are used as often as taqiyah with as little examination. It is thrown as an accusation, returned as a defence, and hardly ever opened up as a subject. Yet it is a Qur’anic term, and it is worked out in…
Karbala is usually remembered as a battle. Yet most of what the earliest historical sources record is not the battle — it is the negotiation that failed before it. The fighting itself lasted a single day. What led up to…
Among the property obligations in Islam, khums is the one most often misunderstood from outside and least often argued from within. Those who pay it frequently cannot say exactly where its evidence lies; those who…
The Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha prayers are two rak’ahs, and what sets them apart from the daily prayers is a set of additional takbirs, each followed by a qunut. The supplication below is the one recommended for each…
There is something about the verse of the salawat that is easy to miss precisely because we hear it so often. In the Qur’an, when Allah SWT commands the believers to do something, the command usually arrives directly: O…
Du’a al-Ahd — the supplication of the covenant — is related from Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq a.s. and recited in the morning as a renewal of allegiance to Imam al-Mahdi a.s. It asks for nothing of this world. It is a…
Of all the matters Muslims dispute, belief in al-Mahdi a.s. is in fact among the least disputed. Sunni and Shia alike hold that a man from the descendants of the Messenger of Allah SAAW will come and fill the earth with…
At the beginning of Safar in the year 61 AH, the captives from Karbala arrived in Sham. They were halted at the door, left standing to wait, and paraded before the crowd. Among them was Ali ibn al-Husain a.s., who at…