what is the definition of Ahl ul Bayt

[Maverick_27]

@Das_Reich

anyway to the point you raised, the present 12er stance on ahlulbayt will never agree to inclusion anyone except the 5 and the cause of that has to with intra-shia schisms as well as shia-sunni schisms.And the former I was trying to highlite as both 12ers and sunnis tend to forget about other ahlulbayt members the hariths, jafars, aqeels, abbas’ etc.This is important as it throws a wrench at the concept of ahlulbayt = panjatan ONLY.

Imami shia or particularly 12er hostility towards abu bakr/umar and aisha/hafsa has little to do with their HISTORICAL role.Rather it is born out of a theological neccsaity , since when imamate became a central doctrine in what was now shiaism it had to explain the events preceeding the caliphate of ali.It did so by shifting blame squarely on the “2 idols of quraish” and their daughters.But 12ers do not reserve this contempt for these "bad " sahabas only.In 12er discourses there seem to be a general trend ( with some exceptions) to discredit sahaba as a whole e.g hadith “if abu dhar knew what was in heart of salman he would have killed him etc” .Again this is without regard to the historical role of these sahaba.As many of these sahaba are those who had very favorable relations with ali before and during his caliphate.

In imami views sahaba are not important as they fade in comparison to the superhuman imams.Even the ayat of Quran explicitly in favor of sahaba like that of awal-o-sabiqoon is intrepreted to mean ONLy ahlulbayt.Part of the reason for this disregard and degredation of sahaba is that generally for 12ers sahaba are not an important source of hadith.For 12ers sources of hadith are mostly pupils of their imams from 5 onwards and they goto great lengths to defend their memory, just like sunnis do to sahabas.

i second u 4 everything u have written,