Reposted
Asalaam alaikum, I want to know if you accept Abu bakr,Umar,Usman and Muawiya as caliphs? if not then why not? as Imam Ali accepted Abu bakr.. as Caliphs and we are shia e Ali.Also those people who didn't agree with Imam Ali when imam Ali made peace agreement with Muawiya are not Shia e Ali as they didn't accept what imam Ali accepted.And do you curse sahaba (Abu bakr,Umar,Usman,Muawiya)?
My 2nd Question is does Zaydi shia believe that Imam Ali is the return of Prophet ilyas? you can check my opinion here
thegreatestsacrifice.wordpress.com/2013/...ed-in-the-scriptures
Wa alaykum as salaam!
Thank you for your question!
If you were to peruse the Questions and Answers section of this site as well as read some of our articles, you would see that the Zaydis do not accept the caliphates of anyone other than the one who was declared caliph by the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his progeny. As for the reason why, it is simply because they were not appointed as such by either the Book of Allah or the statement of His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him and his progeny. Anything outside of those two things are therefore outside of the religion.
As for the "acceptance" of Abu Bakr as caliph by Imam Ali (as), there is no authentic proof to demonstrate this. One of our classical scholars, Sayyid Ahmed bin Musa at-Tabari (ra) demonstrated in his book
Majalis at-Tabari that Imam Ali (as) did not pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr, Umar or Uthman.
Even if he did pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr, those records say that he did so after 6 months. Interestingly enough, everyone is in agreement that Sayyida Fatima (as) died six months after the death of her father, peace and blessings be upon him and his progeny. We must therefore ask: "What is the correlation between the death of Sayyida Fatima (as) and the supposed pledge of Ali (as)?" That is the reason that we say that if Ali (as) pledged allegiance, he was compelled to by force. Islamic Law says that any agreement or pledge out of compulsion is invalid. Therefore, the supposed pledge of Ali (as) was not Islamically valid.
We similarly discussed the issue of cursing the Companions in previous postings. please refer to them.
As for your second question, there is no connection between Imam Ali (as) and Prophet Ilyas (as) according to the Zaydi School.
And Allah knows best!
IRS
