The Lost Household: How Sectarian Intermediaries Replaced the Ahl al-Bayt

If an Imami puts forward al-Sammān and his son Muhammad, al-Nawbakhti, ʿUthmān al-Samari, al-Kulaynī, and al-Qummī, and cannot put anything forward except through them, then he is a follower of them, and they are his intermediaries and his path. No rational Imami can claim that he follows the Household (al-ʿitrah) he alleges except through the mediation of these Shiʿi figures and others across the ages.

As for me, I put forward the family of the Messenger—the guiding, rightly-directing Imams themselves: al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥasanī; al-Nāṣir li-l-Ḥaqq al-Uṭrūsh al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Ḥusaynī; and al-Murtaḍā and al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh Muḥammad and Aḥmad, the two sons of Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn, and others—peace be upon them. These are the Household; I place no intermediaries between myself and them to act on their behalf in every age. Time is never devoid of a proof from among them themselves—descended from al-Ḥasan or al-Ḥusayn—following the way of his predecessors: an Imam who calls (to God) or a balanced scholar.

The Messenger of God—may God’s blessings and peace be upon him and his family—said to the entire community: “So long as you hold fast to them … the Book of God and my Household.” He did not say: the Book of God and the Shiʿa of my Household. Let any rational person prepare an answer to this question tomorrow, when he comes before God accompanied by Shiʿi men, while he himself knows nothing of the Household’s statements or teachings except sheets of paper that convey contradictions, behind which stand Shiʿi figures who misled one another because of them. They themselves—before anyone else—did not know what the saying of the absent Household was: Akhbārī, Uṣūlī, Shaykhī, Qummī, Nīsābūrī, and today Shīrāzī, Khomeinist, Ḥaydarī, Mawlawī, even ʿAlawī!

May God grant you success.
O God, send blessings and peace upon Muhammad and upon the family of Muhammad

Translation of Ustadh Kadhim Al Zaydi (May Allah reward him)