In truth, the fundamental obligation is obedience to Allah alone. Yet there is no way to know all that He commands and communicates except through the messengers. Whoever conveys on His behalf either conveys His commands and His words—in which case he must be obeyed in everything he commands and believed in everything he reports—or is someone else, who is to be obeyed in some circumstances but not others. Such are rulers, who must be obeyed within the sphere of their authority so long as they do not command disobedience to Allah; and scholars, whom those seeking a fatwa or receiving an instruction must obey concerning what they declare obligatory for them, whether they are conveying Allah’s commands or exercising independent legal judgment in matters in which their followers are obliged to obey them. This includes religious teachers and temporal leaders wherever obedience to them has been commanded: following prayer leaders in prayer, pilgrimage leaders during the pilgrimage, military commanders on campaign, judges in their rulings, and rightly guided religious teachers in their guidance, and the like.

The point of this principle is that anyone who holds obedience to an appointed imam to be unconditionally obligatory, whether in belief or in practice, has gone astray in this respect. Such are the misguided leaders of the Imāmī Rāfidah, who posit an infallible imam in every age whom people are obliged to obey. Yet no one after the Messenger is infallible, nor must anyone after him be obeyed in everything. Among the members of the Prophet’s household whom they have designated, one was a rightly guided caliph who had to be obeyed just as the caliphs before him had to be obeyed: namely, ‘Alī. Others were leaders in knowledge and religion, entitled to the same rights as their peers among the leaders of knowledge and religion, such as ‘Alī ibn al-Husayn, Abū Ja‘far al-Bāqir, and Ja‘far ibn Muhammad al-Sādiq. Others were below that rank.