[BWJfEkOB]

Salam Alaykum,

In a discussion concerning whether a certain person who took part in the battle of Badr was actually a Munafiq, I posted the following about how the Twelver Shias are approaching the issue of narrations from the Sahabah. The Shia said:

Although there is hadith mentioning about ahl badar is forgiven, those clear munafik are not part of them. It is the same like Abu Ghadiyah who witness Hudaibiyah but yet he is the killer of 'Ammar who guaranteed hellfire. Therefore, Mu'attib abd Ghadiyah are exception of general statement. This is establish in usool. To which my reply was:

From the above it seems the Twelvers are throwing everything they can, including baseless mixing up of matters. If the Twelvers are telling us that this case is an exception to the general statement and that this is the Usool, then the matter should be finished because they are accepting the general basis that the Companions in Badr and in Hudaybiyah are from the people of Jannah, even if we are to find a few exceptions to the general rule.

But actually what the Twelvers want is us to leave this Usool altogether, and consider that the Sahabah as a whole were liars. In this case the question then becomes: Why should we accept any narrations from the Sahabah, even including those in praise of Ali (RAA)? In fact, why should we even accept their statements that Muhammad (S.A.W.) even existed in the first place (since the words of liars need outside verification for it to be proven, and we cannot take any verification of liars from other liars).

So in this way the 12ers are throwing out Tawatur as a rule for gaining knowledge about things, and we are left to wonder as to how even they can refer to Tawatur in either our books or their books to establish anything. This is because they are establishing a new rule, that even if narrations are transmitted by a mass of people, it could still be false (their example being the Sahabahs mass untrustworthiness, and that most of what has been mass-transmitted to us from them are lies and misinformation). Given this, they cannot refer to any narration as being definitely true, neither from the Prophet (S.A.W.) nor from their "Infalllible Imams", so at most they can refer only to general philosophy as a guideline to their "religion", and have to leave out any and all scriptural information from their faith.

Of course, this matter could have been resolved somehow if their 12th Imam (who for all practical purposes would be a "Prophet", since the chain of true information would be cut off and there would be a need for us to have the uncorrupted Divine Message "revealed" to us again) was living openly in their midst, in which case we the opponents of the Twelvers would need to see the "miracles" of this "Prophet" in order to know that this is the true uncorrupted Divine Message from Allah Himself. But as we know, it is the peculiarity of the Twelver religion that this 12th Imam is not in their midst, so they have practically cut themselves off of all chances of having certainty about any matter, up to and including the very existence of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.), let alone their "Infallible Imams".


So is there some other additions that could be made to this, especially in terms of how the traditional 'Ulama see that how knowledge is gained and disseminated. It is obvious that generally the position of the 12ers is like that of the Hadith-Rejecters, but I would like to know if the above can be expanded upon.