Critique of Shaykhiyya Methodology in Understanding Religion

In the thirteenth century AH, with the emergence of a person named Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsā'ī among the Shiite scholars, new principles were introduced in Imamiyya methodology that were deployed by the successors of Aḥsā'ī and became the origin of some new teachings. This methodology eventually resulted in some heresies and divisions in Shia that finally led to the establishment of Shaykhiyya. The most important principles of Shaykhiyya methodology include the belief in elimination of some verses from the Qur'an, the belief in apparent meanings of hadiths as proofs without regard to the method of the Usulis, relying on a hadith merely based on it being transmitted by reliable transmitters, ignoring the method of scholars of rijāl and dirāya in authenticating hadiths. The deployment of these methods had consequences such as excluding the Divine Book from, and including fabricated and weak hadiths inconsistent with the common sense, in sources of religious knowledge, which in turn resulted in devious and exaggerated beliefs. In this paper, the principles of Shaykhiyya methodology have been reviewed using descriptive-analytic method and criticized using the method of library resources.