Ahl al-Kisa


Ahl al-Kisa, or the People of the Cloak, are the Islamic prophet Muhammad; his daughter Fatimah; his cousin and son-in-law Ali; and his two grandsons Hassan and Husayn.
They are also called Aal al-Aba and in Persian Panj-Tan, meaning 'the Five'. The origin of this belief is found in the Hadith of the Event of the Cloak and the Hadith of Mubahala. This hadith is graded authentic by Shia Muslims and Sunnis, however many Sunnis plead a different interpretation.
It is one of the foundations of the Shia conception of the Imamah, which states that patrilineal descendants of Muhammad's daughter have a special divine spiritual leadership over the Muslim community. The Ahl al-Kisa, along with their descendants, the Imams, form the Shia definition of Ahl al-Bayt, the "People of the House," or the family of Muhammad.
The three larger branches of Shia Islam differ on the nature of the Ahl al-Kisa and the Imams. The two largest branches, the mainstream Twelvers and the Ismailis, consider them to be in a state of ismah, or infallibility: a belief originating from the Verse of Purification in the Quran.
In contrast, the third branch, the Zaidis, view them only as political figures with the duty to lead revolts against corrupt rulers and governments.

Hadith of the Cloak

The Hadith of the Cloak refers to the Ahl al-Kisa. The hadith is an account of an incident where Muhammad gathered Hassan, Husayn, Ali, and Fatimah under his cloak. This is referred to in several hadiths, including within Sahih Muslim, in which Muhammad is quoted as saying Ahl al-Bayt, or the People of the House, from the second part of the Verse of Purification.
This hadith is central to the Shia beliefs. For the Shia, it is the basis of the doctrine that the leader of the Muslims should be purified and from that particular direct line of descendants of Muhammad through Fatimah and Ali that have thus been purified by God. It also serves as the majority Shia doctrine that this line of descendants are infallible, pure, and sinless. The Shia believe that the hadith shows that Muhammad, Fatima, Ali, Hasan, and Husayn are the only members of the Ahl al-Bayt.
Generally, Sunnis also accept the spiritual significance of the event of purification as exalted in the Quran and elaborated upon by Saheeh Hadith, but do not subscribe to the political authority that the Shia infer from this belief.

Summary of the arguments

Context

Certain Sunni scholars hold that the wives of Muhammad were included in the second part of the verse 33:33, since they are addressed in the beginning of verse 33:33. They reject the notion that the end of this verse would be a stand-alone blessing, meant exclusively for Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husain, as they have in mind the context of the verse as a whole and the one preceding it. Albeit, most Sunni would accept the Sahih hadith and concur with the Shia that the special privilege is conferred on the five.
The Shia counter-argument is that the verse itself says "only," implying that the blessing of this merit is exclusive to a single group and one other than the wives, i.e. God desires to keep away the uncleanness from "only" you, "O people of the House", and not from anyone else, and this is why the six stern commandments of the other verses are given to the wives, because they are not protected and must act accordingly; the "people of the house", on the other hand, need no such instructions. The Shia also point out that the rhetoric changes to a masculine tone in the final part of the verse whereas it was feminine before that.

Gender

The Shia also argue that the first part of the verse addresses a person or group in the feminine gender, while the second part addresses in the masculine gender, meaning that at least one person in the group is a male.
Wilfred Madelung, Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford, made the following observation on the Verse of Purification:
According to Laura Veccia Vaglieri in the Encyclopaedia of Islam

The Incident of ''Mubahala''

According to the Sunni hadith collections, it is narrated that during the 9th through the 10th year after hijra, an Arab Christian envoy from Najran came to the Muhammad to argue which of the two parties erred in its doctrine concerning Jesus. Muhammad offered to do the Arabic tradition known as Mubahala, where each conflicting party should cover themselves, and together all parties ask God sincerely to destroy and inflict with curses on the lying party and their families. Muhammad, to prove to them that he was a prophet, brought his daughter Fatimah and his surviving grandchildren, Hasan and Hussain, and Ali ibn Abi Talib and came back to the Christians and said this is my family and covered himself and his family with a cloak.
The Shia believe this authentic hadith proves whom the Qur'an is referring to when it mentions the Ahl al-Bayt which includes only Ali, Fatimah, and their descendants. Meanwhile, most Sunni sources are in agreement with Shia belief saying that only the Ahl al-Kisa, Muhammad, his daughter Fatimah and his two grandsons, Hasan and Husayn, and Ali ibn Abi Talib, participated the occasion - none of his wives, other grandchildren or sons-in-law were selected.

Shia view

The Shia celebrate this event as Eid-e Mubahala. This hadith provides the background for the "purification verse" or ayah al-tatheer from surah Al-Ahzab in the Quran whereby God explicitly identified the Ahlul Bayt :
The tradition about this hadith goes from different sources to Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad. She narrated that once her father visited her home, he had fever and was not feeling well, he asked for a Yemeni cloak which Fatimah brought to him and folded it around him. Later he was joined in that Yemeni cloak by his grandsons Hassan and Husayn, who were followed by their father Ali, who was cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. Finally, Fatimah asked the permission to enter that cloak. When all five of them joined together under the cloak, Muhammad narrated the Quranic verse 33:33 to those under the cloak that all five of them are chosen ones, and he further stated that he wants from God to keep all impurities out of reach and away from all of us. Muhammad then prayed to God to declare all five of them as his Ahl al-Bayt and keep away the Najasat. At that request, God immediately sent Gabriel to reveal to Muhammad that all the five under the cloak are dearest and closest to God and they are Tahir without any traces of impurities.

Political application

The hadith of the cloak and the purification verse was utilized at various times by the Ahl al-Bayt to assert their beliefs to political and spiritual leadership of the Muslim community. For example, at the gathering that was convened after the death of Umar in 644 to select a caliph, Ali made the following argument: "Is there any among us apart from myself concerning whom the "purification verse" was revealed?" When they answered "no" he proceeded: "The People of the House are overflowing with abundant virtue, for the Quran says, 'God wishes to remove all filth and impurity from you O House of the Prophet, and to render you utterly free of pollution.' God has therefore removed from us all evil, outer and inner, and placed us firmly on the path of truth and righteousness."

Sunni view

Some Sunni scholars remark that the "purification verse" was revealed concerning five people: Muhammad, Ali, Fatimah, Hassan and Husayn. Others maintain that the "purification verse" cannot refer to the inerrancy of the Imams because the context in which it occurs relates to the wives of Muhammad and necessitates that it, too, should refer to them, or that at the very least they cannot be excluded from the category it addresses. If it were to imply inerrancy, then the wives of Muhammad would also have to be inerrant, a belief that Sunni scholars do not hold. Shia scholars, however, do believe in the infallibility of Muhammad. Ibn Kathir in his tafsir of the relevant verse says "the scholars are unanimously agreed that were the reason for revelation in this case...but others may be included by way of generalization."
Nevertheless, according to the Sunni historian al-Tabari, the term ahl al-bayt refers to ‘Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husayn. In reference to verse 33:33, L. Veccia Vaglieri in Encyclopedia of Islam wrote:

Shia