The Meaning of " Irja " in Ahl Al-Bait's Narrations

In Muslim communities of the first and the second centuries, the idea of Irja’ emerged in two political and theological levels, in both of which inheres the notion of leaving an affair to the Dooms Day or to God. The term ‘Murji’ah’ has been used in narrations attributed to the Prophet and Imam Ali (p.b.u.h.) and with overlooking the weakly attributed ones, we can claim that in their narrations, the term has usually been used to mean the “people of tradition (sunnah) and community (jama’ah)” or the “people of narrations (hadith)”; which is different from the well-known use of the term. Since Imam Baqer’s time, most of the narrations quoted about Murhi’ah or the idea of Irja’ have used the terms to refer to the people of tradition and community or the people of narrations, and other available narrations have pointed to other meanings of Irja’ by help of verbal evidence. In this paper, we examine the meanings of the term “Murji’ah” or “Irja’” with a more investigation about the narrations attributed to Ahl Al-Bait.