Criticizing the View of Rashid Reza on the Conflict of Mahdism’s Traditions

“Mahdism” has enjoyed a special status throughout the history of Islam, among the Muslim common people and the Muslim elites, and is considered as one of the famous Islamic doctrines. However, there have been those who have challenged this idea and denied it on the basis of their own fundamentals or other reasons. Although the number of these people with regard to the general Muslims believing in the Mahdism are not very much, they were able to be influential at their own times and later. Among these people is “Seyyed Muhammad Rashid Reza”, the owner of “Al-Minar Tafsir” (Al-Minar Interpretation). In “Al-Minar Interpretation”, he has tried to question Mahdism by various reasons, weaken its basis and deny it. One of his arguments is (the presence of) “contradictions” in Mahdism traditions. The present paper deals with this argument with a descriptive-analytic method. It even proves that there is no contradiction among the Mahdism traditions even on the basis of the Sunnis, in addition to the important problems that are addressed to them (such as unwise criticism, the lack of concomitance between the contradiction and forgery, and confusion in finding the source of Mahdism traditions).