Justice and Remembrance: Introducing the Spirituality of Imam Ali

by Reza Shah-Kazemi

By his Sunna we do not mean simply the outward imitation of the Prophet’s actions—a reductionism all too prevalent in our times—rather, we mean the spiritual substance of the prophetic perfection to which the Qur’ān itself refers: ‘Verily, thou art of a tremendous nature’ (68: 4).3 The Prophet’s words and deeds express but do not exhaust this spiritual substance. The inner assimilation of this substance, rather than the merely formal imitation of the words and deeds, is the goal of every spiritually inclined Muslim. There is a profound affinity between the believer’s soul and the prophetic nature, a mysterious proximity that goes beyond time and space, as expressed in the verse: ‘The Prophet is closer to the believers than they are to themselves’ (33: 6). The Prophet, thus, outwardly manifests the perfection which the spiritually sensitive believer intuits, to some degree or another, as determining the very essence of his or her own soul.4 It is not surprising, therefore, to find the Prophet saying that ʿAlī ‘is as my own soul (ka-nafsī)’,5 affirming thereby not only the extraordinarily close relationship between ʿAlī and himself, but also the affinity—and ultimately, identity—between every sanctified soul and the prophetic nature. More mysteriously, he said to ʿAlī, ‘You are from me, and I am from you (anta minnī wa anā minka).’6 Likewise, as regards ʿAlī’s assimilation of the substance of the Qur’ān, we have this prophetic saying: ‘ʿAlī is with the Qurʾān and the Qurʾān ...