Glorified and Exalted is He—that neither his death nor his being killed causes the authority of his messengership to lapse, as the authority of the imamate lapses with the death or killing of the imams. Nor does his messengership require him to live forever and never die, for he is not a lord; he is only the Messenger of Allah, and messengers passed away before him. He conveyed the message, fulfilled the trust, sincerely counselled the Ummah, strove for Allah as He ought to be striven for, and worshipped Allah until certainty came to him from his Lord. Thus obedience to him after his death is obligatory, just as it was during his lifetime—and even more emphatically so—because the religion was perfected and definitively established by his death, with no possibility of further abrogation. For this reason, the Quran was compiled after his death, since it had been completed and definitively established by his death.

If someone says, “He was the imam during his lifetime, but after him someone else became the imam,” then if he means that after him there arose someone equal to him who must be obeyed just as the Messenger must be obeyed, this is false.

But if he means that someone arose to succeed him in implementing his commands and prohibitions, this already occurred during his lifetime, for whenever he was absent, there was someone to deputize for him.

If it is said, “After his death, unlike during his lifetime, he does not directly address a particular person with a command,” the response is that his directly issuing the command is not a condition for obedience to him to be obligatory. Rather, whoever receives his command [and his prohibition] (1) must obey him, just as one who heard his words directly must obey him. He would say:

“Let those who are present convey it to those who are absent, for perhaps one to whom it is conveyed will grasp it better than one who heard it.” (2)

And if it is said, “During his lifetime, he would rule on specific cases, such as making a grant to a particular individual, carrying out the prescribed punishment against a particular individual (3), and dispatching a particular army”—