Shaykh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī · First Principle: Necessity of Imamate
فإن قيل: ما الذي تريدون بتمكيننا إياه؟ أتريدون أن نقصده ونشافهه وذلك لا يتم إلا مع وجوده. قيل لكم:لا يصح جميع ذلك إلا مع ظهوره وعلمنا أو علم بعضنا بمكانه. وإن قلتم: نريد بتمكيننا أن نبخع لطاعته والشد على يده، ونكف عن نصرة الظالمين، ونقوم على نصرته متى دعانا إلى إمامته ودلنا عليها بمعجزته. قلنا لكم: فنحن يمكننا ذلك في زمان الغيبة وإن لم يكن الامام موجودا فيه، فكيف قلتم لا يتم ما كلفناه من ذلك إلا مع وجود الإمام. قلنا:الذي نقوله في هذا الباب ما ذكره المرتضى رحمه الله في الذخيرة وذكرناه في تلخيص الشافي أن الذي هو لطفنا من تصرف الإمام وانبساط يده لا يتم إلا بأمور ثلاثة.
Objection: What do you mean by saying that we should empower him? Do you mean that we find him and converse with him? Reply: That is not possible without him being existent. You will be told that none of that is possible without him being manifest and without us knowing, or someone of us knowing his place. If you say, “We mean by empowering him that we should submit to his obedience, fight under his command, refrain from helping the tyrants and rise to his support when he calls us to his Imamate and proves it to us through his miracles,” we will say to you it is possible for us to do that during occultation, even if it is a time without an Imam. How do you say then what we have been ordained to do cannot be performed without an Imam? Our response here is what Murtadha has mentioned in Dhakhira and what we have mentioned in Talkhis Shafi.
Translation: Sayyid Athar Husain S. H. Rizvi — published with the edition, reproduced verbatim.
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