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11th April 2009
OK this is a broad topic bass i'll try to give a short overview .....
the big majority of the shiaa's a re called twelver shiaas ... meaning that they believe in 12 Imams starting from Imam Ali bin abi Talib (the Prophet's cousin) all the way till Muhammad ibn al-Hassan a.k.a al imam al mahdi who is currently "mughayyab" a messianic figure who will return with Christ......
now the Ismailites are frequently called the "Seveners" because they believe in seven imams.... they believe in the same first 6 imams as the "twelvers" from imam ali bin abi talib up till imam Jaafar bin muhammad ..... now here they split.....
the imams usually appoint the one that comes afterwards so the ismailites believe that jaafar the 6th imam appointed "Ismail" to be the seventh (hence their name) whereas the twelvers believe that he appointed Musa his younger brother.....
the Ismailites have a set of beliefs of their own which are sometimes very different from the twelvers but i don't think going into these is required in this thread....
And as someone said before, they are not recognized as a sect in lebanon..... at least not now.....from what i know i think they're few in number in lebanon....
they do exist in much bigger numbers in other countries though .... from what i remember i think they are present in acceptable numbers in india and pakistan or afghanistan .... they also exist in syria but i can't remember where exactly ....but they were granted a land there by Abdul Hamid the second the ottoman sultan ..... |