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| Shiites believe that Imam will come in the future from Prophet’s descendants, titled Mahdi. Shi’ites believe the Imams are religious authorities based on the fact that their bloodlines go back to Muhammad. Shi’ites and Sunnis both use the term imam to refer to respected religious scholars. |
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| rightly guided one, the restorer of the faith, justice and equity on earth. The messiah who will return before the day of judgment, shi’ites believe that the “hidden” imam is the one who will return as the mahdi |
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| followers of Mukhtar and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya after their deaths. Many refused to believe that the latter had died, and lived in expectation of his glorious return. (Mukhtar proclaimed ibn al-Hanafiyya the Imam and the Mahdi who would restore justice. He attracted significant numbers of non-Arab mawali to his movement, a development which reoriented the Shi’s movement and led to the proliferation of extremist Shi’I sects. Took part in the second civil war, no longer exist as a group, but their ideas of a living mahdi and occultation form a major part of moder Shi’ite doctrine |
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| going into hiding, disappearing, not dying, but disappearing in order to come back. He will return before the Day of Judgment. |
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| believe that the last, twelfth Imam will appear before the day of judgment to restore justice on earth, who was said to disappear and who went into occultation. Muhammad al-Mahdi is the 12th Imam, is in occultation. |
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| argued that Ja’far’s elder son Ismaiil was his designated successor. |
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| were close to Sunni Muslims in doctrine but were politically militant and believed that the only true imams were those who actually sought to take power by force. Believe that Zayd ibn ‘Ali (a grandson of Husayn) was the 5th and final imam, only exist in modern Yemen, do not believe the imams are infallible, and are fairly similar to Sunnis in practice. |
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