Now that we've defined the only way that a person can identify who the messenger of God is, and that is through the will, through knowledge, and through the calling to the supremacy of God, which is the law of knowing the proof of God.
Now that we've defined the only way that a person can identify who the messenger of God is, and that is through the will, through knowledge, and through the calling to the supremacy of God, which is the law of knowing the proof of God.
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Now that we've defined the only way that a person can identify who the messenger of God is, and that is through the will, through knowledge, and through the calling to the supremacy of God, which is the law of knowing the proof of God.
And after we have proven that it is the only way that a person can identify if he's following the truth or not, or whether the individual who's claiming to be speaking in the name of God is truly from God or not, we come to the aspect of what is it that makes us need to follow this individual ?
And what special traits does God give this individual to ensure that we are on the safe path or the true path ? And that brings us to the topic of infallibility and the correct understanding of what infallibility is. So in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in all of their branches, in all of their sects, in all of their schools of thought, they have this idea or concept of infallibility.
The spokesperson of God has to be infallible to a certain degree, or else what would be the point of following a fallible human being ? So somebody who is fallible means somebody who's capable of making mistakes. Somebody who's infallible is somebody who is incapable of mak…
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ing mistakes.
If we claim that God is good and God is perfect, then that means that God is infallible. And if God is infallible and He wants to send a messenger to creation, then that message and that messenger have to also be protected from mistakes, protected from misguidance.
So He has to have an infallible messenger. So this is the topic whereby a lot of people come into disagreement with one another. You have people who are extremists on one end and people who are extremists on the other end.
There are people who are usually called those who basically... Or people that exaggerate in their religion, that basically believe that the idea of infallibility, what it means to be infallible, means that they are absolutely perfect, incapable of making any mistake in anything whatsoever.
That does not just include religion, but it also includes basically earthly knowledges. He has to be infallible in making mistakes even in his own personal life. So everything that this individual does from A to Z, from the moment that they were born until the moment that they die, has to be one hundred percent perfect.
If it's not one hundred percent perfect, then this person, according to the exaggerators or the people that hold this belief, cannot be a proof of God. And if the prophet or the messenger was to make a mistake, they would explain or understand that mistake as having a hidden meaning behind it, and that it wasn't a mistake at all, but rather they would explain it in another way.
Then you have the opposite group of people, and the opposite group of people believe that the prophet or the messenger is pretty much a human being. And there's almost no difference between him There actually is no difference in their belief between him and any other human being.
And in fact, the messenger is capable of making mistakes. And there are examples of people who hold this belief who have lived in the ages of the prophets and the messengers. They are the individuals who, for example, when the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers be upon him and his family) would be splitting up the war booty amongst the Believers, you would have one of these individuals who is in the congregation of Muhammad, who claims belief in Muhammad.
He would walk over and he would tell him, "How are you dividing the war booty ? You need to be fair." And so he would publicly correct the Prophet because in his belief, the Prophet is clearly making a mistake and he's capable of making a mistake to the point of being unjust or unfair.
The correct understanding of infallibility is the one which Ahmed al-Hassan had come with and had explained very clearly. And that is that there are two types of infallibility. There's earned infallibility and there is inherent infallibility.
Earned infallibility means that the individual is born ; he is imperfect ; he is capable of making mistakes like every other human being ; he is ignorant ; and through his sincerity, through his good deeds, through his active pursuit of God, he reaches a stage of enlightenment and closeness to God that he becomes incapable of making mistakes.
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And we're going to explain what types of mistakes those are. And then you have the person who is inherently infallible. And the person who is inherently infallible means that from the moment that they are born until the moment that they die, they have never committed any mistakes and they are incapable of committing any mistakes.
And that too, we're going to explain what types of mistakes it is referring to. Ahmed Al-Hassan said that out of the 124,000 Prophets and Messengers that have come to the earth, there have been none of them that were inherently infallible with the exception of five individuals.
And that is the final Prophet, the most perfect of them all, Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him) ; his vice, Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (peace be upon him) ; the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him) and the wife of Imam Ali, Fatimah (peace be upon her) ; and the two sons of Fatimah (peace be upon her) and Ali ibn Abi Talib (peace be upon him), Al-Hasan and Al-Husayn.
This household, the People of the Cloak, they are the only five individuals that have ever been sent to the earth to incarnate in human form. And from the moment that they were born until the moment that they die, history has not found a single mistake on them.
All the rest of the Prophets and the Messengers were born normal, like any other human being, and through their sincerity, through their dedication, God chooses them and grants them a certain level of infallibility. So all the Prophets and the Messengers would have earned infallibility, and the Vicegerents, and the household of Muhammad and the Ahl al-Bayt, they were inherently infallible. So what does it mean though to be infallible ? Does it mean, for example, that a person cannot— whether it's earned or whether it's inherent, does this infallibility mean that a person cannot commit a mistake ?
Well, it depends on what mistake we are talking about. Ahmed Al-Hassan clarified that the meaning of being infallible is that you are protected, safeguarded from taking people out of the truth and taking them into falsehood, leading people astray. An infallible person is incapable of leading the people astray no matter what.
And this is what He does. If you follow the infallible person, you will never be misguided. If you follow the infallible person, you can never go astray. But the infallible person can still make mistakes. They can still make mistakes in terms of their personal life, personal choices they can make for themselves ; that does not affect the nature of religion or the outcome of religion.
And they can also make mistakes in terms of their own path with God. So a common misunderstanding is that the prophets and the messengers from Adam all the way to Muhammad and beyond, and the Imams and the Mahdis, that they are somehow not in a test.
But the reality is that they are in a test. Any human being that is on the planet that has incarnated through birth and dies at some point in time, they are entered into the same test that everybody else enters into. And a person can pass that test or they can fail that test, but everybody is tested.
And the proof for that fact is the fact that Adam, even though he was chosen by God and appointed by God, even though he had already been sent forward as a messenger, and it was made a divine obligation that all of the angels prostrate to him and obey him, and even though he knew the names of all things, and even though he called towards the supremacy of God, Adam disobeyed God.
Adam was not exempt from the retribution of God. Adam was kicked out of paradise, and a public statement was made by God that Adam and Iblis have now been disobedient. Outside of paradise they must go. So some people might say, "Okay, well, how do I know then that the messenger is not going to mislead me if at the same time they're capable of making mistakes or disobeying God ?" They are capable of making mistakes.
They are capable of disobeying God. If they weren't capable of disobeying God, then they would be forced into faith, forced into belief, and therefore they wouldn't deserve the rank that they are in. It would be unfair that they would be chosen as prophets and messengers by God if they didn't have that free choice and that ability to make the same mistakes as you and I.
Right ? So the thing about it is though, is that God, if the prophet and messenger makes that mistake, has to publicly point it out or has to switch or take away the station, the office from that prophet or messenger and make it clear to the rest of the people that so-and-so has gone astray.
Don't follow that individual. Or trade or switch the prophet and the messenger. And we'll talk about prophets and messengers that had failed at a later date, and what it means for a prophet or messenger to fail or to be switched.
But let us go back now to the point of infallibility. So another prophet that was infallible and that also disobeyed God and received a punishment for that was Jonah. Jonah disobeyed God. Jonah, in the Torah and also in the Quran, tries to run away from God, abandons his mission.
And because of that, God punishes him by being swallowed by a whale, and Jonah almost doesn't make it anymore, until Jonah repents and Jonah is sent back to his people. So there you have another example of a prophet who had earned infallibility.
His nature at birth was not infallible, and that nature showed up later on because he disobeyed God. He had doubt. He ran away. But because his act of running away did not lead other people astray, it was only an act that pertained to him.
He only led his own self astray. He did wrong against his own self. He didn't lose his rank of infallibility because to the people, he was still infallible. So a prophet and messenger can make a mistake if it pertains to them, but they cannot mislead other people.
A person who misleads other people cannot be infallible. Um, you find that actually in the stories of all of the prophets and the messengers, you can find that every single one of them had committed a particular mistake or sin.
You have, in the story of Noah, Noah is told by God to get on the ark and to, you know, prepare for takeoff. And Noah questions God. He stops Him. He says, "God, but what about my son ?" And God chastises Noah. He says to him, "Do not ask about that which you have no knowledge, lest you be from the ignorant ones." So God's upset.
He's comparing Noah to the ignorant ones. He's saying, "Don't be like that. What you're doing is ignorance. Don't question me, I'm God." So Noah's faith at that moment was a little bit weak. He considered that God had promised to him that his family would be saved, and now God's breaking His promise, so he needs to bring it to God's attention.
This is a shortcoming, a mistake on Noah's behalf. His faith is not at the level that it should be. But it's not a mistake that caused the other people that were with him, the believers with him in the ark, to fall astray.
Nobody apostate-- uh, nobody abandoned religion. Nobody got misguided because Adam ate from the tree. Nobody got misguided because Jonah wanted to run away. Nobody got misguided when Noah questioned, uh, God. You have, uh, Moses admitting in the Quran that he committed a mistake in terms of killing the Egyptian.
He asks for God's forgiveness in this. You have other prophets and messengers who have done the same or admitted the same. So what does it mean then that a prophet or a messenger have doubt ? Is that even possible ? Well, there's a very interesting verse in the Holy Quran, and it says that until the messengers lose hope and think that they are belied.
Until the messengers lose hope and think that they were belied or lied to. Abu Jafar (peace be upon him) was asked about the meaning of this verse, in which he said, in the Hadith from the Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them), that the messengers that this verse is referring to had doubt that the shaitans had taken the image of angels and seen them.
Now, isn't that incredible ? So this verse and this interpretation by the Imam (peace be upon him) shows to us that the prophets and the messengers had a hidden struggle that was not highlighted. That the prophets and the messengers were actually in a more difficult test than the people.
The people had to believe in the prophet or the messenger, and had to believe that that prophet or messenger was truly sent by God. But behind closed doors, that prophet or messenger had to first and foremost have faith that he himself was sent by God.
So they themselves were tested too, in their faith, before they tested the people in theirs. Isn't that incredible ? So they, if you go back and you think about it, would get an inspiration, or an angel would come to them in a cave, in a, uh, in a field, in a dream, and would command them to do something.
And the angel would identify themselves as having been, you know, being sent by God. And the mess- There would have to accept that. Accept the proof that the angel presented as having been sent by God. And sometimes they would fall into doubt, just like normal human beings do.
Sometimes they would have struggles. Sometimes the promises of the angels or of God would be delayed to them, just as it was delayed to the people, and their heart would become tight, their chest would become tight. And so they would wonder, is it, is this inspiration from the devil or is it from God ?
Another verse from the Quran is speaking to Muhammad and it outright says, "And if you are in doubt concerning what has come down to you, then ask the people who have read the book before you." And the interpretations from the scholars concerning this verse is that the verse came down on the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him), commanding him that if he had doubt that his name was mentioned in the Torah before him, prophesized by Moses that he would come, if he had doubt about that revelation, then he can ask one of his companions who was a Jew who had converted to Islam and who knew the Torah.
To which the prophet's response in the narrations is after this verse came down, he said, "No, I'm not going to doubt and I'm not going to ask." So there must have been something, a question, a feeling that was brewing in the chest of the Prophet (God's prayers and peace be upon him) in order that this verse come down, or else why would it come down ?
It would be pointless to come down. If the Prophet wasn't feeling something and the verse came down for no reason, then that would be nonsense. But the Prophet Muhammad (God's prayers and peace be upon him), the difference between him and the rest is that it would stop.
It would begin and end at a feeling. As to where maybe one of the other prophets or messengers, he would act upon that feeling like Jonah, and he would run away. So that's the difference between Yunus and between Muhammad, between earned infallibility and inherent infallibility.
