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A second doctrine now sits exactly where Order No. 5 on the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas already sat: three bodies carry a recorded stance on it, and every one of them is a flat refusal. Isma, the Shia doctrine that the Imams are protected from sin and error, has no holder recorded anywhere in this atlas outside Shia Islam itself.

What the Doctrine Claims

Isma holds that the Twelve Imams, like the prophets before them, cannot sin and cannot err, in judgment or in transmission. It is not a side belief: it is the ground Twelver Shia Islam stands on for treating an Imam's own rulings and reported sayings as a source of law in their own right, the same standing a prophet's words carry.

Three Refusals, Three Different Grounds

The Ashari school, the mainstream Sunni theological tradition, denies that any figure after the prophets is protected from sin and error at all. Ibadism refuses it on its own separate ground, tied to its own account of leadership: an Ibadi imam is elected on qualification, answerable for conduct, and may be deposed, which is the Ibadi position against both the Sunni caliphate and the Shia imamate alike. Sunni Islam is recorded taking the same position more broadly, and with it removes the basis for treating an Imam's sayings as law. Three bodies, arguing from three different places, arrive at the identical refusal, the same shape Order No. 5 already showed once.

Where To Read More

• Ismah (The Protection of the Imams From Error)Revelation, Covenant and ProphecyThe doctrine itself, and the page every stance below is recorded against.
• Ashari SchoolKalam SchoolsThe mainstream Sunni theological school that denies post-prophetic infallibility outright.
• IbadismIslamRefuses Isma on its own separate ground, tied to its elected and answerable account of leadership.
• SunniIslamRecords the same refusal more broadly, removing the basis for treating an Imam's sayings as law.