Including: The Arabic pair tawalla-tabarru' and the closely related pair walaya-bara’a both refer to the following complementary concepts in Shia Islam: Tawalla and walaya denote the unconditional loyalty, alliance, devotion, love, and obedience of Shia Muslims toward their imams and the Islamic prophet Muhammad (d. 632), while tabarru’ (tabarra in Persian) and bara’a signify their dissociation and detachment from enemies of Muhammad, imams, and imams' followers.
[11] Especially the former may be kept hidden under persecution but otherwise manifested in imprecations or social ostracism, such as withholding alms tax from enemies and not praying behind them.
[16] Early in the Islamic history, rather than sects, some Muslims belonged to communities, the boundaries of which were defined through affiliation with one's co-religionists and dissociation from everyone else.
Later imams augured that Abu Bakr and Umar had usurped the caliphate from Ali, Muhammad's designated successor at the Ghadir Khumm (632), and most companions either participated or acquiesced to this power grab.
[23] Yet al-Baqir, for instance, is not known to have publicly reviled Abu Bakr and Umar,[24][25] most likely because he exercised religious dissimulation (taqiyya),[26] for imams and their followers were relentlessly persecuted in that period.