Ismaili (Ismailiya): a branch of Shia Islam

Ismailis today live primarily in India (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and Pakistan (see Hunza), where they form a significant minority. In addition, there are communities in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Syria, Yemen, Iran, Oman and Bahrain, eastern Turkey, East Africa, and scattered throughout the Western world - in all, in more than 25 states.

Approximately 1,900 Ismailis live in Germany. In 2008, there were a total of four places of worship (Jama'at Khana) of this religious community in Germany. In addition to the Jama'at Khana in Berlin, there are three others in Bösel, Essen and Frankfurt.

One of the most famous Germans belonging to this religious community is Gabriele Prinzessin zu Leiningen (formerly Begum Aga Khan), married from 1998 to 2014 to Karim Aga Khan IV, the religious leader of the 20 million Ismaili Nizarites.

The true religion

The Ismailis refer to their faith as "the true religion" (dīn al-ḥaqq), or simplified "the truth" (al-ḥaqq). They also call themselves "people of truth" (ahl al-ḥaqq) and their proclamation is the "call to truth" (daʿwat al-ḥaqq). Their doctrine is probably influenced by pre-Islamic models such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, which were widespread precisely in the regions of origin of Ismailism, southern Iraq and Persia. Indeed, the earliest of its propagandists were also called "Manichaeans" by anti-Ismaili polemicists.

The theological background of their doctrine of salvation is a cosmic original sin that led to the creation of the world. In his omnipotence (qadar) God (Allāh) created everything that exists by the creative word "Be!" (kun!) (Sura 36:82). According to Ismaili doctrine, omnipotence and the creative word form a primordial pair, with qadar representing the masculine principle and kūnī - as the feminine form of the imperative - the feminine principle. Through a sin, this female principle had set in motion the fatal process of creation when, blinded by hubris, it failed to recognize its creator and mistook itself for God. In order to humiliate kūnī, God created other beings, which she is not capable of creating, whereby the cosmos unfolded and matter came into being.

Ismailis consider the actual calamity that accompanied the creation to be the God-remoteness of human souls, which has been trapped in matter ever since. Only knowledge (ancient Greek: gnō̂sis, Arabic: ʿilm) can lead the human soul back to its origin, but it is incapable of knowledge on its own and therefore remains in a state of helplessness and senselessness. In order to bring redemptive knowledge to mankind, God must reveal Himself to it. The bearers of this revelation were the six successive "spokesmen" (nāṭiq) Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and finally Muhammad, each of whom conveyed to humanity the divine revelation that, codified in the form of a religion of law (šarīʿa), was able to subdue and restrain mankind. The revelation transmitted by Muhammad represents the latter, to which the believing person must now surrender (islām).

For the Ismailis, however, the six religions with their rites, ceremonies, commandments, and prohibitions thus brought upon mankind represent only external (ẓāhir) shells through which the ignorant human souls are subdued. But the true religion, that is, the original form of faith in God before the Fall, is hidden in the interior (bāṭin) of His revelation, which man alone is not capable of recognizing and therefore alone cannot partake of.

The Imamate

The Qur'anic revelation delivered by Muhammad is at the center of Ismaili belief, whose reading (qurʾān) is done according to allegorical interpretation, since the message is not presented in plain text but in coded form. The actual message of the Qur'an is revealed from the inner/secret (bāṭin) meaning hidden behind the outer (ẓāhir) wording. Every verse, every name, and every word contains a hidden message that can only be learned through methodical decoding (taʾwīl). As "people of the inner/secret" (ahl al-bāṭin), or "Batinites" (al-Bāṭiniyya), the Ismailites were therefore preferred by outsiders even in medieval historiography. But no human being has the necessary knowledge to recognize this inner message.

According to the Ismaili doctrine, God had placed at the side of each of His spokesman-prophets an agent (waṣī) who alone was able to recognize and preserve the inner meaning. To Adam his son Seth (or Abel), to Noah his son Shem, to Abraham his son Ishmael, to Moses his brother Aaron, to Jesus his apostle Simon Peter, and to Mohammed his cousin and son-in-law Ali. Only those initiated into the doctrine of the "true religion" know of that agent who is given the necessary charisma (baraka) and the associated abilities of "knowledge" (ʿilm) and "wisdom" (ḥikma), which alone enables him to read the inner message. Thus, through the mediation of this agent, the faithful become partakers of the true message of divine revelation, while the rest of humanity dully and ignorantly follows the rites and precepts of its outward shell.

Further following the doctrine, in each prophetic cycle, after the demise of the "Speaker" and the "Plenipotentiary", the community of believers was led by a series of seven principals (imām), the seventh of whom then emerged as the new "Speaker". In the sixth and final cycle, the Islamic one, these imams were the immediate descendants of Ali. To the seventh of them was to fall the role of the seventh and final prophet of divine revelation, the "Rightly Guided" (al-Mahdī) and the "Apparent" (al-Qāʾim), to whom the messianic proclamation of the end-time resurrection (qijāmah), the abrogation of the law (rafʿ aš-šarīʿa) and thus the restoration of the paradisiacal original state of faith in God before the Fall, the state in which the first human Adam prayed to God. The charism inherent in the authorized person is passed on by designation (naṣṣ) to the respective successor in the Imamate, whereby access to the inner message remains guaranteed for the believer in the future. As the first designation taken as precedent, the Ismailis, like all Shi'ites, recognize the handing over by Muhammad to Ali before the battle of Uhud in 625 of the "sword with a spine" (Ḏū l-faqār), also called the "double-edged sword," sent by God and proven with divine powers. In their view, this gesture constituted a religious as well as testamentary expression of the Prophet's will, by which, in God's blessing, he had offered his son-in-law the deputization (ḫilāfa) in leadership over the faithful after his demise. Last but not least, the Ismailis, like all Shi'ites, could refer to the Prophet's (ḥadīṯ) saying at the Pool of Chumm, where he is said to have confirmed to his cousin the future rule over the believers shortly before his death in 632:

The dynastic succession in the Imamate among the descendants of Ali from his marriage with the Prophet's daughter Fatima takes place among the Ismailis in a strictly linear form from father to son. The inherited charisma could only be passed on from one generation to the next and not from one brother to another brother. As an exception the medieval Ismailites only allowed the brothers Hassan (d. 670) and Hussein (X 680), in that they first still elevated Ali to a loftier special position as the "foundation of the Imamate" (asās al-imāma) and regarded his eldest son Hassan as the first Imam, after whose death the charisma had passed to the brother Hussein. It was not until the Nizari Ismailis that they corrected their way of counting in the sense of a strict linearity of inheritance, in which the foundation Ali is now also the first Imam and Hassan has been banished from the lineage altogether. In any case, however, the counting method of the Ismailis differs from other Shiite groupings such as the "Twelvers", who count both Ali and Hassan, which may result in different counting methods especially for the early Imams.

The charisma inherent in the Imamate is considered indivisible and can therefore only be passed on to one son, while other sons remain excluded. There is no explicit birthright; the decisive factor is the will of the Imam, who chooses from among his sons the one he deems worthy of leadership over the faithful. Such a designation does not necessarily have to be in written form, it can also take place in the form of a particularly distinguishing gesture, following the example of the Prophet and his son-in-law. In the history of the Ismailis, it was precisely this that was to prove the cause of various disagreements, succession disputes and splits.

The Pillars of Islam

The legal compendium of the Ismailis, called the "Way of the Members of the (Prophet's) Household" (maḏhab ahl al-bait), recognizes seven "pillars of Islam" (daʿāʾim al-islām). First and most crucial is faith (īmān) in the true Imam; one who does not recognize the Imam is a submissive (muslim) to revelation, but not an actual believer (muʾmin). The remaining pillars are cultic purity (ṭahāra), ritual prayer (ṣalāt), alms-tax (zakāh), fasting (ṣaum), pilgrimage to Mecca (ḥaǧǧ), and "engagement" (ǧihād) in holy struggle.

This Ismaili law, which is valid until today for the Shia, is the sixth major school of law of Islam besides the four Sunni and the Twelver Shiite schools. It does not differ essentially from the law of the Twelvers - its compiler an-Nu'man was even accused of having been a secret Twelver - and contains with few exceptions only sayings of the first five Imams of the Shia, who are also recognized by the Twelvers. Presumably, the intention was to put Ismaili law on a basis that could also be accepted by other Shiites, in order to simplify their conversion to the Ismaili doctrine.