Imamate and Leadership: The Case of the Shi'a Fundamentalists in Modern Iran/L'imamat Et Le Leadership: Le Cas des Fondamentalistes Chiites en Iran Moderne (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Twelver Shi'ism is the second largest branch of Islam and its adherents believe in twelve divinely-guided, infallible leaders (the Imams) as the true successors of the Prophet Muhammad. During the presence of the Imams (632-874), there was a tendency among the zealous Shi'a to establish a just Islamic/Shi'i government under the leadership of the Imams. However, after the tragedy of Karbala (in which Husayn, the third Imam, and his companions were massacred in 680 by Yazid, an Umayyad Caliph) the closest disciples of the Imams in obedience to them avoided political activism. In this way, particularly the sixth Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq, strongly prohibited the Shi'a from such political activism until the rise of Imam Mahdi at the end of the time (Bayat 1989, 348).