Is Ismailism Really Islam? What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Before We Begin

I want you to know something before you read this: I’m not an outsider writing about Ismailism.

I grew up Ismaili, and quite an involved one. I attended Jamatkhana daily, I taught REC, I gave my dasond, I volunteered regularly, I even sat behind paat for a year. My life was very much built around my Ismaili faith, and I was very happy.

I believed in the Imam and I loved him. When people questioned his actions, I defended him. When I heard arguments against our beliefs, I dismissed it as ignorance. Anyone who criticized our beliefs just didn’t understand our deeper, esoteric truth.

So if you’re reading this with your guard up, I understand. I had mine up too.

But as I took the initiative to learn more about my faith, I found that there were a lot of things that genuinely didn’t make sense. When I brought them up to people I trusted – Al-Waizeen, my STEP teachers, and Jamati leaders – they either gave me very unsatisfying answers or made me feel bad for questioning things.

Even though their deflections and discouragement in asking questions really hurt me, I didn’t let myself lose the desire to learn more. I knew that if Ismailism was true, which I believed it to be, then I should never be afraid to go outside my comfort zone in asking valid questions. I was going to keep learning until I truly understood what my beliefs were.

Maybe you’ve felt something similar. Maybe you’ve asked questions at Jamatkhana that got unsatisfying answers—or no answers at all. Maybe you’ve started researching late at night, feeling a strange mix of curiosity and guilt.

Wherever you are in that process, I want you to know: this article isn’t here to attack you. I have no interest in belittling your beliefs or making fun of them. I once had those same beliefs too.

I am simply here to provide sources and insight to questions that I’d had for a long time as an Ismaili. This is kind of like a gift to my past self, if I could go back in time and hand it to him.

I hope these words are of benefit to you in your journey, and I pray that Allah guide us both to His true path and make us of those He loves. Aameen.

“Is Ismailism True Islam” – How Can We Tell?

For anyone sincerely asking this question, we need a framework—a standard to test against.

You can’t build your understanding of Islam on a single ayah or one hadith taken in isolation. The truth has to emerge from the Quran and Sunnah together—their themes, their repeated emphasis, their consistent teachings across thousands of verses and narrations.

That said, some hadith beautifully summarize the broader picture. They don’t stand alone—they’re confirmed and reinforced by everything around them. This narration gives us a clear standard:

This hadith isn’t meant to settle everything by itself. It’s a lens—a standard the Prophet ﷺ himself provided for evaluating where any group stands.

The Prophet ﷺ is telling us that his community—everyone who calls themselves Muslim—will fracture into many groups. And of all those groups, only one will be rightly guided. The rest, despite their sincerity, despite their confidence, despite their centuries of tradition—will have strayed.

Here’s what makes this uncomfortable: every group believes they’re the one. Sunnis believe it. Twelver Shias believe it. Ismailis believe it. Each is completely certain. And yet logically, most of them must be wrong.

So the question isn’t whether your group claims to be correct. Every group claims that. The question is whether that claim survives honest examination.

And the Prophet ﷺ gave us the exact standard to test it against.

The Standard He ﷺ Gave Us

Look carefully at what the Prophet ﷺ said when asked about the saved group.

He didn’t say “the one with the longest chain of Imams.” He didn’t say “the one with access to esoteric knowledge.” He didn’t say “the one whose leader gives farmans.” He didn’t point to any lineage, institution, or hidden teaching.

He said: “That which I and my companions are upon.”

This is staggeringly simple. And that’s exactly the point.

The Prophet ﷺ didn’t leave behind a puzzle. He left an intentionally clear and straightforward path:

Its night is like its day. There’s no hidden version for insiders. No secret “real Islam” different from what was practiced openly. The path is clear—visible to anyone willing to look.

And just to remove any ambiguity, look at how precisely the Prophet ﷺ defined Islam’s essential boundaries:

“Thrown Islam behind his back.” Not reinterpreted it. Not evolved beyond it. Thrown it away.

This is the standard. Now let’s understand why it matters so much.

Why Following the Prophet ﷺ Matters

One thing I noticed growing up Ismaili is that the Prophet ﷺ often felt… ignored or forgotten. Respected, yes. Mentioned in prayers, yes. But not someone whose life I was expected to study, whose example I was meant to follow in detail. He delivered the message; the Imam re-interprets and changes virtually everything about it for today. That was the framework.

It took me years to realize how backwards this was.

The Prophet ﷺ was not just sent to deliver the message—he was sent to embody it. He was the living interpretation, the walking, breathing demonstration of how the Quran is meant to be understood and applied.

Allah Himself explains why the Quran was delivered through a human messenger who could do more than just relate the words:

The Prophet ﷺ was never meant to be understood like a mailman delivering a package. His wife Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) captured this perfectly when asked about his character:

“His character was the Quran.”

Think about that. If you want to know what the Quran looks like when lived, you look at him. If you want to know how to pray, how to fast, how to give charity, how to treat others, how to worship—you look at him.

If Allah had just wanted to deliver words, He could have sent a book from the sky. He sent a man because application matters. Context matters. Living example matters.

This makes the Prophet ﷺ as relevant today as he was when the Quran was just being revealed. And it makes his recorded practice—the Sunnah—not an outdated relic to keep on a dusty shelf, but the permanent and definitive guide to understanding Allah’s message.

This is why the Prophet ﷺ included himself in the standard: “That which I and my companions are upon.”

Why the Companions Matter

Growing up Ismaili, I didn’t even know what “the Companions” (or “the Sahabah”) referred to. If one was ever mentioned or brought up, they were seen as background characters at best—people who existed during the time of the Prophet ﷺ but don’t hold any relevance in the grand scheme of things. The focus was always on the Imams.

But the Prophet ﷺ included them in the standard for a reason.

The Companions weren’t just “early Muslims.” They were personally taught, corrected, and molded by the Prophet ﷺ himself. Their collective understanding of Islam cannot be fundamentally mistaken—because he made sure they got it right.

Imagine for a moment: What if you could learn Islam directly from the Prophet ﷺ? What if you could ask him questions, watch him pray, see how he handled every situation, and have him correct you when you misunderstood something?

That’s what the Companions had. For 23 years, the Prophet ﷺ taught them, trained them, refined their understanding, and prepared them to carry Islam forward. This wasn’t casual proximity—this was direct transmission from the source.

The Prophet ﷺ himself testified to their quality:

Their collective understanding forms a standard precisely because they were shaped by prophetic hands. If they all understood Islam a certain way, that understanding isn’t just one opinion among many—it’s the understanding the Prophet ﷺ cultivated and approved.

So when the Prophet ﷺ says the saved group is “that which I and my companions are upon,” he’s giving us a verifiable benchmark: the Islam that was fully taught and properly practiced in that first community.

Which brings us to an uncomfortable question: if all of this is true—if following the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions is the standard—what would Islam have looked like if they had actually held Ismaili beliefs?

What If They Had Been Ismaili?

Let’s try an honest thought experiment. Let’s genuinely imagine what history would look like if the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions had actually held Ismaili beliefs.

First, consider what Ismaili theology actually claims about the importance of the Imam. Here is a farman from Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah:

Think about what this claims. According to this teaching, the prayer of every Muslim who doesn’t recognize the Ismaili Imam is rejected by Allah. Every Sunni’s prayer. Every other Shia’s prayer. The prayers of over a billion Muslims alive today—worthless.

Now apply that backward. If this were true—if recognition of the Imam was so essential that without it your worship means nothing—wouldn’t the Prophet ﷺ have made this the centerpiece of his message?

Essential truths cannot be hidden. If a doctrine determines whether your worship is accepted or rejected by Allah, it would be the most repeated, most emphasized teaching in all of Islam—not a secret passed through hidden lineages.

The Prophet ﷺ spent 23 years teaching Islam. He repeated the important things constantly—monotheism, prayer, character, the Day of Judgment. If Imamat was the hinge on which all worship depends, it would have been repeated just as constantly. We would have dozens of hadith, crystal clear, saying “your prayer means nothing without recognizing the Imam of your time.”

We don’t. Which tells us something.

But let’s continue the thought experiment. If Imamat—as Ismailism understands it—was the central doctrine, it would have shaped everything about early Islam. From the very first days in Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ would have been saying: “Ali and his descendants will be your divinely appointed guides. The true interpretation of the Quran can only come from them. Follow the Imam of your time above all else.”

This would have been repeated, emphasized, clarified. Just like he repeated the importance of prayer, of monotheism, of good character. Major doctrines get major emphasis.

And if the esoteric was meant to supersede the exoteric—if the inner meaning was what truly mattered, not the outward practice—this would have been reflected in how the community actually lived.

But this isn’t what we find. What we find is the opposite.

The historical record shows the Companions passionately committed to the outward practices. They prayed exactly as the Prophet ﷺ prayed. They fasted exactly as he fasted. They preserved and transmitted his exact words and actions with meticulous care. When they disagreed about anything, they went back to the Quran and what the Prophet ﷺ said—not to a living Imam’s interpretation.

What About Hazrat Ali Himself?

This is where it gets personal for Ismailis. We revere Hazrat Ali. We claim to follow his lineage. So what did he actually do?

His recorded statements, letters, and rulings are preserved. And what do we find there?

Commands to establish prayer. Exhortations to fast. Emphasis on the Quran as the ultimate criterion for truth. Insistence on following the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Detailed rulings on Islamic law that he enforced during his caliphate.

No secret esoteric teaching that overrules the outward. No abolishment of Shariah. No hint that the practices were symbolic shells to be discarded by later generations.

In his famous letter to Malik al-Ashtar, Hazrat Ali gave counsel that could not be clearer:

And his actions matched his words. Hazrat Ali prayed Salah—the same Salah, with the same movements, the same recitations—until his last breath. He was literally assassinated while praying Fajr in the masjid. If anyone had the authority to “transcend” the outward prayer, it was him. He was the Imam, according to Shia belief. Why was he still praying like the other Companions?

And consider what Hazrat Ali himself reportedly said about the sects that would emerge:

“Poses to love us and abandons our orders.” Hazrat Ali is warning about people who claim love for his family while abandoning what his family actually taught—and he labels them the worst of the sects that will emerge.

Applying the Standard

Based on the Prophet’s ﷺ criterion, we can ask a straightforward question:

This isn’t rhetorical. It’s a genuine test. Let’s apply “what I and my companions are upon” to Ismailism honestly.

On Prayer

The five daily prayers weren’t optional. They were the backbone of daily life. The Prophet ﷺ taught exactly how to perform them—the movements, the recitations, the times. The Companions stopped for prayer in the middle of battles.

On Fasting

The Prophet ﷺ fasted Ramadan every single year. His Companions fasted. They broke fast together each night. This wasn’t symbolic—it was physical, embodied practice that shaped the rhythm of their entire year.

Here is what Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah taught about fasting:

“In my Ismaili religion.” His dharam. And in his religion, the fast that Allah commanded and the Prophet ﷺ practiced every year of his life is “not obligatory.”

The Quran says should fast. The farman says not obligatory. One of these is not like the other.

On Hajj

Hajj—pilgrimage to Makkah—is one of Islam’s five pillars. The Prophet ﷺ performed it. Over 100,000 Companions joined him. It wasn’t metaphorical.

On the Sources of Guidance

The Companions spent their lives memorizing, reciting, studying, and transmitting the Quran and hadith. When they disagreed, they returned to these sources. When they taught the next generation, they transmitted these sources. Ismailis, in my experience, treat both very differently.

I remember when I first started reading the Quran with translation. I was excited—I had questions, things I wanted to understand. I approached a Jamati elder, someone I respected, and asked if they had ever read the Quran’s meaning themselves.

Their response floored me: “Just read the farmans of the Imam. They replace the Quran for today’s times.”

Replace the Quran.

I didn’t know what to say. This is the book that Allah Himself calls guidance for mankind. The book that the Prophet ﷺ told us to hold onto until the end of time, promising we would never be misguided as long as we cling to it. The book he recited and wept over. The book the Companions memorized word for word and transmitted at the cost of their lives.

And Hazrat Ali? He dedicated himself to its recitation and study. He was honored among the Companions for his deep knowledge and understanding of it. The idea that his descendants would tell us to set it aside for someone else’s words—it would have been unthinkable to him.

Yet here I was, being told that someone’s words could replace it.

On What Changed—and When

These questions about prayer, fasting, Hajj, and sources of guidance all point to one more piece of the puzzle—one that’s not about ancient history, but about what happened within living memory of our own families.

Here’s something many Ismailis don’t realize: our great-great-grandparents practiced Islam differently than we do today.

Ismailis in Gujarat before the late 1800s prayed Salah. They fasted Ramadan. They followed the Shariah as Muslims had done for over a thousand years. This wasn’t some distant, disconnected community—this was our own families, just four or five generations ago.

Then Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah came and changed things.

This isn’t a hostile accusation. Ismaili historians themselves document it openly. In his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, Ismaili historian Rafique Keshavjee wrote:

He describes what this looked like in practice:

So within living memory of our ancestors, the pillars of Islam were set aside. Prayer was replaced. Fasting was reinterpreted. Hajj was deemed unnecessary. And in their place: “all recommendations… to be followed were to be those issuing directly from the Imam.”

Remember how the Imam phrased it in his farman about fasting? “In my Ismaili religion (dharam)…”

His religion.

Now recall the standard the Prophet ﷺ gave us for the saved group: “That which I and my companions are upon.”

Not “that which a future Imam will devise.” Not “that which will be revealed through esoteric interpretation.” What he—the Prophet ﷺ—and his Companions actually practiced.

Our great-great-grandparents were closer to that standard than we are today. Something to think about.

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“But Maybe It Was Secret”

I know this response well because I used to give it myself.

“The Prophet ﷺ taught the exoteric to the masses, but he taught the esoteric to Ali. The real teaching was passed down through the Imams. You just don’t have access to the deeper truth.”

I understand why this argument is appealing. It resolves the tension neatly. But I couldn’t make it hold up under honest examination.

First: The Prophet ﷺ spent 23 years teaching. If Imamat and esoteric interpretation were the core message, they would have been taught clearly and constantly—just like prayer, monotheism, and everything else central to the faith. We don’t see this.

Second: The Prophet ﷺ was not someone who hid truth out of fear. He proclaimed monotheism in Makkah when it nearly killed him. He corrected his closest companions publicly. He said:

Does that sound like someone who would hide the most important teaching from the majority of his Ummah?

Third: If the outward practices were never really the point, why did the Prophet ﷺ establish them in such painstaking detail? Why did he spend years teaching exactly how to pray, when to fast, how to perform Hajj—if these were just symbols that would later be set aside?

Fourth: What would have been the purpose of sending a Prophet to teach and perfect a law that was never meant to last? Why not just teach the esoteric directly from the start, if that’s what truly matters?

A secret teaching that contradicts everything taught publicly isn’t hidden wisdom. It’s a different religion.

Fifth: The Companions—including Ali—didn’t teach any secret esoteric Islam. Their recorded words and practices show the same Islam: Quran, Sunnah, prayer, fasting, Hajj. If Ali didn’t practice or transmit this supposedly deeper teaching, what is the basis for claiming his descendants did?

Sitting With What This Means

If you’ve read this far, I imagine you’re feeling a lot of things. I remember feeling them too.

Defensive. Angry. Confused. Sad. Maybe a strange sense of relief mixed with grief. Maybe a desperate hope that there’s some counter-argument that will make this all go away.

I’m not here to rush you. Faith transitions don’t happen in one sitting, and pressure helps no one.

But I want to be honest with you about what I couldn’t escape: the Prophet ﷺ gave us a clear standard. He said the saved group is “that which I and my companions are upon.” And when I compared that standard to Ismaili beliefs and practices, I couldn’t make them match.

Not in how they prayed. Not in whether they fasted. Not in where they made pilgrimage. Not in what sources they turned to for guidance. Not in the beliefs they emphasized and taught.

I had to decide what to do with that.

If Ismailism is true, it should withstand scrutiny. If its practices align with the Prophet’s ﷺ way, that should be demonstrable—not just asserted. You shouldn’t have to take anyone’s word for it. Not mine. Not your parents’. Not the Imam’s.

Where Do You Go From Here?

If something in this resonated—if you’re feeling that quiet pull toward the Prophet’s ﷺ path—here are some gentle starting points:

• Read the Quran with translation. Go in without preconceptions and let it speak to you directly. Notice what it emphasizes, what it commands, what it promises.

• Learn about the Prophet’s ﷺ life. Become familiar with his story, his mission, and the Companions who learned directly from him. This lecture series is an accessible and wonderful place to start. See for yourself what he actually taught.

• Try praying the Salah. Even if you’ve never prayed the five daily prayers before, learn how. There are countless resources online. Pray it once, just to feel what it’s like to worship the way the Prophet ﷺ and Hazrat Ali worshipped.

• Find community. This road is hard to walk alone. Try to find Muslim friends who are knowledgeable and can help you through your journey.

• Be patient with yourself and your family. Your parents believe what they believe sincerely. Changing your path doesn’t require disrespecting theirs. You can honor your family while honoring the truth.

A Final Image

I’ll leave you with something the Prophet ﷺ demonstrated to the Companions:

The path isn’t complicated. It isn’t hidden. It isn’t reserved for those with special access or esoteric knowledge.

It’s the path he walked openly for 23 years, witnessed by thousands, preserved meticulously for anyone sincere enough to look.

I told you at the beginning: I’m not an outsider writing this. I walked the same halls you walk. I sat in the same Jamatkhana. I felt the same resistance you might be feeling right now—that instinct to protect what you’ve always known, what your family taught you, what feels like home.

I’m not asking you to betray your family or abandon your community overnight. I’m asking you to do what I eventually let myself do: look. Read the Quran for yourself. Study the Prophet’s ﷺ life for yourself. Compare what you find to what you’ve been taught.

If Ismailism is true, it will survive that examination. If it’s not—wouldn’t you want to know?

I found my way back to the path the Prophet ﷺ drew in the sand. It wasn’t easy. It cost me things I still grieve. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything—because it’s his path. The one he promised would never lead us astray.

If you ever decide to walk it, know that you’re not alone. Many have made this journey before you. And there’s a whole Ummah waiting to welcome you home.