Appearance
Infallibility (ʿIṣmah)
This page gathers what Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī teaches about infallibility (ʿiṣmah) across al-Tasnim: what it is, the infallibility of the prophets and the Imams, the angels, and why it matters for the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Each answer is a short summary of his words, with links that open the passage in al-Tasnim.
What infallibility is
What does infallibility mean?
Infallibility means protection against sinning. Its exalted stations belong only to the prophets and the Imams, but no revealed or rational proof says it is impossible for a virtuous seeker to reach it, and its lower degrees are open to others.
It is also not limited to practical affairs. Those vested with authority must be protected from sin, whether intentional or by inadvertence, and must also be able to judge scholarly matters correctly.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 4:59 · Tafsir al-Tasnim – Verse 4:59
Does an infallible person still have free choice and religious duties?
Yes. Being infallible does not mean being free from religious obligations. God addresses the Prophet with commands such as “Establish prayer” and “So do not be among the skeptics” (3:60). The infallible one performs the obligatory and recommended acts and abandons the forbidden and disliked ones “with knowledge, intention, and choice.” What sets him apart is that he does wrong neither intentionally nor through forgetfulness.
Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī distinguishes two kinds of infallibility. In the first, disobedience is impossible in itself, and such a being cannot be under religious obligation. In the second, which infallible humans have, disobedience is possible but never occurs, and this is fully compatible with obligation.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 3:60 · The Prophet’s (s.a.w.) Freedom from Doubt · Verse 2:34 · Subtleties and Allusions
Is infallibility part of the prophet’s own nature?
No. The Prophet and the other infallibles are infallible “through divine providence, not through essential infallibility.” It is God, who Himself is never forgetful (“And your Lord is not forgetful”), who protects them from forgetfulness and oversight. So He says: “We shall have you recite [the Qur’an], then you will not forget” (87:6), with “you will not forget” following from “We shall have you recite.”
For God the absence of forgetfulness is essential; for the Prophet it is a gift from God. One who lives constantly in the divine presence has complete infallibility: he not only “does not speak from desire” (53:3), but does not stand, sit, speak or stay silent from desire.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 3:60 · The Prophet’s (s.a.w.) Freedom from Doubt
Is a just person the same as an infallible one?
No. Justice is a core quality of anyone in authority, but it is not enough. A just person may be protected from intentional sin, yet he remains open to mishaps and inadvertence that can cloud his judgment when he gives or carries out rulings.
For this reason obedience to a just person cannot be unconditional. Only someone protected from both sin and error can be obeyed without condition, as 4:59 commands for those vested with authority.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 4:59 · Tafsir al-Tasnim – Verse 4:59
The infallibility of the prophets
Why must a prophet be free of error even in his personal duties?
If a prophet erred in his own religious duties and, even by mistake, did something against the sharīʿa, it would cast doubt on the reliability of his sunna: his words, actions and tacit approvals. A prophet who forgets his own obligations could not be fully trusted in his speech, his conduct or his legislative silence.
The same point holds for his mission. The Messenger is described as reliable in conveying the messages of the unseen without holding anything back, and Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī stresses “the necessity of the Prophet’s infallibility in both transmitting and not concealing” divine knowledge.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:35 · Subtleties and Allusions · Introduction · Difficulty of Understanding the Sunnah
Did Adam sin when he ate from the tree?
Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī offers several ways of understanding the incident that keep Adam’s infallibility intact. It took place before legislative prophethood had been established, so the commands were advisory, like those given to the mothers of Moses and Jesus. It may have happened through forgetfulness (“but he forgot,” 20:115), and an act done in forgetfulness carries no blame. Or it may be seen as leaving what is preferable (tark al-awlā) in response to a guiding, not obligatory, instruction.
The view that prophets may commit minor sins before their appointment is, he says, hard to establish, especially for Adam as the first prophet.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:35 · Subtleties and Allusions · Verse 2:36 · A Discussion of the Narrations
See also: Key Debate: Did Adam Sin? · Glimpse: The Sanctity and Infallibility of Prophet Adam (a.s.)
How did the angels know that Adam made no mistake in telling them the names?
The angels learned the names through Adam, not directly from God, so one may ask how they knew he did not err (2:33). Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī’s answer is that in the realm of the knowledge of the names, the realm of the angels and above, there is no room for error at all. Error can only happen where there are means of deception, such as Satan’s whispering, illusion and the substitution of falsehood for truth.
Where only truth prevails, doubt finds no place. So ʿAlī said: “I did not doubt the truth from the moment it was shown to me.”
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:33 · Subtleties and Allusions
See also: Key Debate: Could Adam Have Erred in Telling the Angels the Names?
If Jesus was infallible, why does God question and warn him?
When God asks Jesus whether he told people to take him and his mother as gods (5:116), Jesus answers that he had no right to say what is false, because it is incompatible with his station of infallibility and messengership. In the vessel of infallibility, false speech is inconceivable.
Nor does the threat in 5:115, which Jesus received with the others, contradict his infallibility. God gave a severe threat about the Prophet himself, “Had he faked any sayings in Our name, We would have surely seized him” (69:44-47), and about the angels too.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 5:116 · Logical Analysis of Jesus’s Answer · Verse 5:115 · The Lack of Contradiction Between Divine Threat and Prophetic Infallibility
The infallibility of the Imams
Why must the Imam be infallible?
“My covenant does not extend to the wrongdoers” (2:124) speaks of God’s covenant and of wrongdoers in absolute terms. So imāmah is only one instance: no divine covenant, whether prophethood, messengership, imāmah, guardianship or succession, reaches a wrongdoer. The divine covenant is founded on infallibility, just as divine vicegerency is founded on knowledge of the names.
Every sin is a form of wrongdoing: “Whoever transgresses the limits of God—it is they who are the wrongdoers” (2:229). So only one free of all sin can receive the covenant.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:124 · Infallibility: The Condition for Attaining All Divine Covenants · Verse 2:124 · The Necessity of the Infallibility of the Imām
Can someone who sinned in the past and then repented be an Imam?
Others hold that a repented wrongdoer is no longer a wrongdoer and so may receive imāmah. Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī argues that the verse excludes him. Reason shows that the wise do not entrust a great office to someone with a bad record, and God’s forgiving the past (8:38) does not make a person fit for imāmah.
The verse also proves this by fitting God’s answer to Abraham’s request, which was for some of his descendants. Weighing the possible kinds of descendants, the conclusion is that anyone who did wrong in any part of his life cannot become an Imām. The covenant reaches only those who were just and infallible throughout their entire lives.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:124 · The Deprivation of Non-Infallibles from the Divine Covenant
See also: Key Debate: Can a Repentant Wrongdoer Receive God’s Covenant?
Who can know whether someone is infallible?
Only God. Infallibility is a hidden secret of the inner self, so it can only be known by God, and imāmah, which requires it, can only be proven by a valid text (naṣṣ). It is never in the power of an individual or a society to choose someone for it, unlike human affairs settled “by consultation among themselves” (42:38).
On 4:59 he says the same: a person’s infallibility can be known only through an explicit declaration from God or His Messenger. In the Verse of Purification (33:33) God declared the Household of the Prophet to be so.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:124 · The Bestowed Status of Imāmate · Verse 4:59 · Tafsir al-Tasnim – Verse 4:59
How does 4:59 show that those vested with authority are infallible?
The Messenger is obeyed unconditionally because he is infallible: “Nor does he speak out of [his own] desire” (53:3). In 4:59 “those vested with authority” are joined to “the Messenger” with no condition, so obedience to them is also unconditional.
But God never commands indecency or injustice (7:27; 16:90). If those in authority could sin or err, God would not command obedience to them without condition. So the ones He means do not disobey Him and are protected from wrongdoing and inadvertence, and such infallibility befits only the infallible figures.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 4:59 · Tafsir al-Tasnim – Verse 4:59
See also: Key Debate: Those Vested with Authority
Infallibility, the Qur’an and the Sunnah
Why must there always be an infallible Imam with the Qur’an?
The Prophet’s saying that the Qur’an and his progeny will never separate is a report of the unseen, and for it to be true there must be an Infallible Imām present until the Day of Judgment. It also shows that the Imām must be infallible and know the meanings and realities of the Qur’an.
This inseparability is more than an Imām carrying a copy of the Qur’an. It is an inner bond between imāmah and revelation: the Imams are the foremost explainers of the Qur’an, and the Qur’an in turn directs believers to them.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Inseparable Link Between the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Family (a.s.)
See also: Glimpse: The Inseparable Link Between the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Family
If the Infallibles cannot err, why must narrations be checked against the Qur’an?
Because the sayings attributed to the Infallibles have been open to distortion and fabrication since the Prophet’s time, unlike the Qur’an, which is preserved from alteration. The checking is of the report, not of the Infallible.
So narrations fall into two kinds. Non-definitive Sunnah must be compared with the Qur’an. Definitive Sunnah, “by virtue of its issuance from an infallible source,” needs no such check: its origin is certain and its attribution to God is beyond doubt.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Doubts about the Independent Authoritativeness of the Qur’an
The angels
Are the angels infallible?
Yes. Infallibility is one of the marks that set angels apart from jinn: “They do not disobey God in what He commands them” (66:6). Since Iblīs disobeyed, he was not an angel. Some limit 66:6 to the keepers of Hell, but Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī replies that angels of higher rank are certainly infallible too, and that 21:26-27, “they cannot precede Him in word, and they act by His command,” covers all angels.
Not all angels are alike, though. A purely intellectual angel cannot disobey and is not under religious obligation; an angel of a lower kind of immateriality, though infallible, could disobey and can be under obligation.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:34 · Subtleties and Allusions