The Status of Political Power and Social Power in the Shiite Imams’ Approach and Performance; Subject Matter or Creed?

The Saqifa incident after the Prophet’s departure was a starting point in the formation of new arrangements of political power in the traditional context of the religious society in that era. In that political struggle (i.e. Saqifa), Ali bin Abi Talib was ignored and, afterwards, other Imams were not much directly present, if at all, in the political and governmental sphere, except for the presence of Imam Ali and Imam Hassan as caliphs and Imam Reza’s presence as vicegerent or crown prince. The swing of Imams’ entering the sphere of political power and their withdrawal had numerous reasons, among them one can refer to the violent governance and behavior of the ruling power, Imams’ approach to the political power and the government as well as explaining it in its subject matter and its creed. Meanwhile, the sphere of social power was open to them and spread before them. The social power was the best channel through which Imams could rightly explain the religious thought in theory and practice. The present study attempts to answer the question of “how was the Imams’ approach and performance in the two spheres of political and social power?” and investigates it assuming that the power was a subject matter and creed for Imams. In this regard, to explain the study better, we have used the political sociology and political sciences, including Parsons’ theory on political and social power to theoretically explore the issue.