Muḥammad al-Bāqir, son of Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, son of ʿAlī, son of al-Ḥusayn the martyr, son of Imam ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—an Alid, Husaynid.

He is the last of the Twelve Leaders whom the Imāmiyyah claim to be protected from error—yet infallibility belongs to no one save a prophet. This same Muḥammad, they allege, is al-Khalaf al-Ḥujjah (the Successor, the Proof), the ṣāḥib al-zamān (Master of the Age), the ṣāḥib al-sirdāb of Sāmarrāʾ, a man who is supposedly alive and will not die until he emerges to fill the earth with justice and equity just as it had been filled with tyranny and oppression.

We would dearly welcome that—by Allah—but they have already been waiting for him for 470 years. One who sends you to an absentee has not treated you fairly; what, then, of someone who directs you to an impossibility? Fairness is rare indeed—so we seek refuge in Allah from ignorance and caprice.

Our master Imam ʿAlī is one of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, assured of Paradise (may Allah be pleased with him). We love him with the deepest love, yet we do not claim for him infallibility—nor for Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq.

His two sons, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, are the grandsons of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and the leaders of the youth of Paradise; had they been invested with the caliphate, they would have been worthy of it.

As for Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, he enjoyed great standing, counted among the foremost practising scholars. He was fit for the imamate, though he had peers, and others issued more legal verdicts and transmitted more reports than he.

Likewise his son Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir was a noble master, an imam and jurist, qualified for the caliphate.

So too his son Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq—of lofty rank, one of the leading scholars—was more deserving of leadership than Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr.

And his son Mūsā, of high status and sound learning, was more entitled to the caliphate than Hārūn, though in nobility and virtue he had equals.