Ismaili Ta'wil of al-Wali — The Friend of God and the Guardian: How Ismaili Thought Reads 10:62-63 'The Friends of God Have No Fear' Not as a General Category Available to All Righteous Persons But as Encoding the Imam's Unique Position as the Living Wali Who Mediates Walayah to Believers

In Ismaili ta'wil, al-Wali (الوَلِيّ — The Friend, The Guardian, The Master; *wali* from *w-l-y*: nearness, closeness, authority; multiple meanings in Arabic: [1] wali = someone near and dear; friend; [2] wali = guardian [as in wali al-'ahd, guardian of the covenant; wali al-amr, the one in authority]; [3] awliya' Allah [Friends of God]: the Quran's category of those near to God; the key verses: 10:62-63 'Indeed, the friends of God [awliya' Allah] have no fear and no grief — those who believed and used to fear God'; 2:257 'God is the wali of those who believe — He brings them from darkness into light'; 5:55-56 'Your wali is only God and His messenger and those who believe, who establish prayer and give zakat while bowing [in prayer]'; the Sufi reading of awliya' Allah: Sufism developed an extensive 'saint' theology around the category of awliya'; the wali is one who has reached nearness to God through spiritual discipline; there is a hierarchy of saints; the supreme saint [the qutb or 'pole'] leads the invisible spiritual hierarchy; wilaya [sainthood] is available to any person who achieves the necessary spiritual realization; Ismaili ta'wil of al-wali: the Sufi 'universal sainthood' model is replaced by a structured Imamic model; [1] al-Wali par excellence: the Imam is the wali of God in each age — the supreme nearness-to-God embodied in a human person; 5:55-56's reference to 'those who believe and establish prayer and give zakat while bowing' is read in ta'wil as a reference to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib [who gave zakat while bowing in prayer] = the first Imam = the first wali; [2] walayah [derived from wali]: the doctrine of attachment to the Imam as the path to nearness to God; walayah is not an achievement of individual spiritual work but a relationship — given through bay'ah and sustained through ta'wil; [3] 10:62-63 in ta'wil: 'the friends of God have no fear and no grief' — these friends are the Imams and, derivatively, the believers who have actualized walayah through commitment to the Imam; the derivative walayah: individual believers participate in walayah not by achieving their own sainthood but by being within the Imam's walayah; the mu'min's proximity to God is derivative of the Imam's proximity; [4] 2:257 'God is the wali of those who believe': in ta'wil, God's walayah toward believers is mediated through the Imam — the Imam is God's instrument of walayah toward humanity; the Sufi critique: Sufism's individual wali model claims direct access to divine nearness without the Imam; Ismaili ta'wil's response: such claims to individual walayah without the Imam are the 'false walayah' — nearness claimed without the mediating chain that makes it real) is the Ismaili map of friendship with God.