Imam Ṣādiq (P.B.U.H.), with the extensive help of his father and grandfather–meaning Imam Sajjād and Imam Bāqir (P.B.U.T.), especially toward the end of Imam Bāqir’s (P.B.U.H.) life–and then himself with the help of this effort was able to train a number of Muslims who were believers and learned, genuine, revolutionary, and devoted ready to take risks throughout the Muslim world. Yet these were not ordinary people; these were not ordinary people–not that they were from privileged classes, no; they were the very businessmen and merchants and servants and so on and so forth, but in terms of a spiritual status they did not resemble ordinary people at all. They were people whose lives were summarized in their goals and in their schools (of thought) and they were everywhere. What is surprising is that Imam Ṣādiq’s (P.B.U.H.) companions were everywhere; not presuming that they were only in Medina, no; more of them were in Kūfa than in Medina. There were people even in Shām itself. These are that enormous organizational network of Imam Ṣādiq’s (P.B.U.H.). [It was] The ‘Alawite party, the Shi‘ite party; this is what I meant when I said that the organizational network is the very Shi‘ism. However this is one of the unknown chapters of Imam Ṣādiq’s (P.B.U.H.) life. This is among the matters that I stress and insist upon; an enormous organizational network, a complete party that was administrated by Imam Ṣādiq (P.B.U.H.) throughout the Muslim world; this was a strong point.
1980/05/09
A network that was responsible for significant and effective activities concerning the issue of leadership in many remote areas of the Muslim nation, especially in Arab Iraq and Khurāsān; however this is just one side of the issue and an insignificant part of it. The subject of secret organizations in the scene of Imam Ṣādiq’s (P.B.U.H.) political life as well as the other Imams (P.B.U.T.) is an example of the most important and the most exciting, and at the same time, the most unknown and the most obscure chapters of this very eventful biography.
As we said earlier, one cannot and need not expect unequivocal documentation in order to prove the existence of such an organization. One must not expect that one of the Imams (P.B.U.T.) or one of his close companions to have openly admitted to the existence of a Shi‘ite politico-intellectual organization; this is not something that one can admit to. The reasonable expectation is that if the enemy had also discovered the existence of the Imam’s (P.B.U.H.) secret organization one day and asked him or one of his companions anything about it, he completely would have denied the existence of such a thing and thought it to be a suspicion or call it an accusation. This is the perpetual property of a secret task. Of course, one cannot expect the investigator of the history of the life of the Imams (P.B.U.T.) to accept the existence of such an organization without any convincible evidence and proof. One should be in search of the conjunctions, evidences, and interior aspects of apparently simple events which, although do not attract the opinion of the common viewer, but with deliberation and reflection, they would denote many of these secret courses of events. If, with such a viewpoint, a close look throughout the two and a half centuries of the lives of the Imams (P.B.U.T.) is taken into consideration, the existence of a secret organization at the service of and under the command of the Imams (P.B.U.T.) will be almost [accepted as] indisputable.
