Too bad if you do not have time to read it. If the court judgement does not convince you, then I do not think anything else will. You are not worth the effort.
I’m starting to wonder how exactly the court judgment has convinced you. Why aren’t you willing to bring out the relevant passages? If you read the text, it should not be a problem for you. Every time I bring questions to you all you seem to do is provide me with various references and tell me to read them and find the answers therein. I already did this with the articles you previously posted, and concluded that they contained nothing. I showed this to you. Now be generous and kind enough to save me the trouble of going through this text by bringing forth, since I’m sure you’ve read it, what you think it says with regards to the question at hand.
The Quran and Hadith are a bunch of statements as well and they are not going to result in absolute proof.
They are a bunch of statements
only if you’re not a Muslim. Otherwise, it is absurd that you, as a Muslim, say something like this. As a Muslim, as someone who accepts the Islamic revelation, you’re wrong in saying that they are just simply statements and don’t constitute proof of your imam. I’ll even demonstrate to you the falseness of your view. Consider the following:
If is demanded of you: what is the proof for the authority of the Imamat of your imam i.e. Ali (as) without reference to the Qur’an or hadith?
And (1) if you answer by saying: the proof is Vishnu is Ali and all the Avatars were Ali, he possesses the ‘noor’, the court says what I claim him to be is true, and etc.
The first thing you’ll be asked is for proof of these claims i.e. how you come to the conclusion that he is Vishnu, the evidence that the court presented, etc, and if you aren’t able to provide any, then these things that you’ve said become nothing but empty statements.
(2) If, however, you answer: the proof is that the Qur’an says ….. And the hadith say ….
And provide the various proofs that Shi’is generally provide for the successership of Ali(as), I can no longer ask for any further proof since these proofs you’ve provided are
directly related to the question we began with. Moreover, they are from the Qur’an and hadith, which we both (at least the first), as Muslims, accept as authoritative. They are therefore not simply statements anymore. Now I might ask: what is the proof that the Qur’an and hadith say this? And I’m sure you can provide me with that. However, what I can’t ask, as a Muslim, is what is the proof that what the Qur’an and hadith say is correct since
I accept them as authoritative beforehand. Now if you deny the authority of the Qur’an altogether, which you do, and say that it’s not authoritative for you without your imam, you again run into the previous problem i.e. you haven’t proved your imam yet to consider him as authoritative. This is one of the points I keep trying to get you to see.
In any case, in both arguments we commit an error known as the
bare assertion fallacy by assuming the premise in the argument to be true merely because it says they’re so. But only in the second case is it not so problematic since we must, as Muslims, accept the Qur’an (and hadith) as authoritative
apriori. To break down what I’m trying to say to you even further, consider the arguments in their syllogistic form,
In case 1 your argument is:
P1: The article says that a Hindu man says Ali is Vishnu, the bearer of the noor, etc.
P2: The same article says this is true.
C: Therefore, Ali is Vishnu, the bearer of the noor, etc.
Or alternatively,
P1: The court says that the Aga Khan is the manifestation of God’s Word.
P2: The court says that this is true.
C: Therefore, the Aga Khan is the manifestation of God’s Word.
Do you see the flaw in this argument? Unless you provide me with how they’ve established him to be Vishnu, the bearer of the ‘noor’, or the manifestation of God’s Word, without reference to the Qur’an as I demand, then all you have done is uttered nothing but empty statements. You must do this since
to me the article or the court is not authoritative and I will not accept what they say without evidence. You, on the other hand, seem to accept what articles or courts say without any proof. The reason for this, I believe, is because you have
already accepted the authority and proof of the Imamat of your imam apriori. I’m wondering how you have come to accept it though. Is it solely because of what articles or courts say about him? If so, then if some article or a court proceeding made statements to the effect that the Aga Khan is not the bearer of the ‘noor’ or Vishnu, etc, would you accept what they say? If not, why not? Would you demand proof from them for the statements they’ve made? If so, why not do that for the statements articles and courts make that are in his favor?
In case 2 your argument is:
P1: The Qur’an and hadith say that Ali is the successor of the Prophet (saw).
P2: The Qur’an and hadith say this is true.
C: Therefore, Ali is the successor of the Prophet (saw).
Even though it’s flawed from the point of view of a non-Muslim, this argument cannot but be valid from our point of view; that is to say,
only on the condition that we, as Muslims, accept the authority of the Qur’an.
The statements that I have provided regarding the judgement are as valid as those of the Quran and Hadith.
No they’re not as valid as the Qur’an and hadith. They might be valid to you but they’re certainly not valid to anyone who won’t accept them without any sort of justification. Why aren’t non-Quranic and non-hadith statements that are against your imam being the bearer of the ‘noor’, etc, valid to you?
The rest is all a matter of faith.
Faith does not necessarily mean
blind faith. I think that you think it does; your apparent belief in your imam seems to indicate this.
The point being made is that Imamat can be 'proven' by other means besides the Quran and Hadith.
You’ve yet to prove this.
Let us agree to disagree and leave it at that.
I have no problem with that.