LECTURE :
I received a letter in Jordan not too long ago from a British
Muslim, asking me questions about modern calls to replace traditional
Islam with an ostensible “return to the way of the Salaf, or ‘early
Muslims.’” When I answered one of these questions, I realized that many
other people might be wondering the same thing, and thought that
presenting the question to you tonight in a wider forum might be of
greater benefit to the British Muslim and non-Muslim audience.
The letter asked me:
Are
the Hanbali Mujtahid Imams al-Dhahiri and Ibn Hazm considered Ahl
al-Sunna? And was Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal an anthropomorphist—meaning
someone who ascribed human attributes to Allah? Can you provide me
examples of the sayings of Imam Ahmad that show he did not have
anthropomorphic ‘Aqida?
The questions proved to be related in ways unsuspected by their
author. What unites them is literalism as an interpretive principle,
which is the subject of my talk tonight. We will look at it first in
respect to ijtihad, meaning the ‘qualified deduction of Islamic legal
rulings from the Qur’an and hadith.’ But we will look at literalism
also, and most carefully, from the point of view of ‘aqida or Islamic
belief, in understanding the Qur’anic verses and prophetic hadiths that
are called mutashabihat or ‘unclear in meaning’—such as the verse in
Surat al-Fath that says,
“Allah’s hand is above their hands” (Qur’an 48:10)
—termed
‘unclear in meaning,’ mutashabih, because linguistically hand can bear
multiple interpretations, and its ostensive sense seems to imply
‘belief in a God with human attributes,’ that is, anthropomorphism, an
understanding categorically rejected by the Qur’anic verse in Surat
al-Shura,
“There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him” (Qur’an 42:11).
We
shall see that literalism was a school of thought in Islamic
jurisprudence, though not considered a very strong one by traditional
scholars. But in tenets of faith, and particularly in interpreting the
relation of the mutashabihat to the attributes of Allah, literalism has
never been accepted as an Islamic school of thought, neither among the
Salaf or ‘early Muslims,’ nor those who came later.
In answer to
the first question, “Are the Hanbali Mujtahid Imams al-Dhahiri and Ibn
Hazm considered Ahl al-Sunna?” Dawud ibn ‘Ali al-Dhahiri of Isfahan,
who died 270 years after the Hijra, and Abu Muhammad ibn Hazm, who died
456 years after the Hijra, were not followers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal but
Dhahiris or ‘literalists’ in jurisprudence. Whether Dawud al-Dhahiri
was a mujtahid—meaning qualified to issue expert Islamic legal
opinion—has been disagreed upon by Muslim scholars, not only for
reasons we will discuss, but also because little that he wrote has come
down to us.
As for Ibn Hazm, traditional Islamic scholars have
not accepted his claims to be a mujtahid, the first qualification of
which is to have comprehensive knowledge of the Qur’an and hadith.
Scholars point to his many substantive mistakes in hadith knowledge,
and adduce, for example, that if someone doesn’t even know, as Ibn Hazm
did not, about the existence of the Sunan of al-Tirmidhi, who died
nearly a hundred and fifty years before Ibn Hazm did, it is not clear
how he can be considered a mujtahid. But aside from their
qualifications, what interests us tonight is their Dhahirism or
‘textual literalism’ as an interpretive method.
What the
Dhahiris are most famous for is their denial of all qiyas or analogy.
It is recorded, for example, that Dawud held that the Qur’anic
prohibition of saying “Uff” in disgust to one’s parents did not prove
that it was wrong to beat them, since the literal content of the verse
only concerned saying “Uff,” and no analogy could be drawn from this
about anything else. Similarly, Ibn Hazm seems to have believed the
prohibition in hadith of urinating into a pool of water did not show
that there is anything wrong with defecating in it. These are two
examples of denials of what is called in Arabic a qiyas jaliyy meaning
an a fortiori analogy.
Denying the validity of the a fortiori
analogy is so counterintuitive, that Imam al-Juwayni, who died 478
years after the Hijra, has said:
The position adopted by the
most exacting of scholars is that those who deny analogy are not
considered scholars of the Umma or conveyers of the Shari‘a, because
they oppose out of mere obstinacy and exchange calumnies about things
established by an overwhelming preponderence of the evidence, conveyed
by whole groups from whole groups back to their prophetic origin
(tawatur).
For most of the Shari‘a proceeds from ijtihad, and
the uniquivocal statements from the Qur’an and hadith do not deal [n:
in specific particulars by name] with even a tenth of the Shari‘a [n:
as most of Islamic life is covered by general principles given by Allah
to guide Muslims in every culture and time], so they [the literalists]
are not considered of the learned” (al-Dhahabi, Siyar a‘lam al-nubala’
[Beirut: Mu’assasa al-Risala, 1401/1984], 13.105).
From
Juwayni’s remark that “the uniquivocal statements from the Qur’an and
hadith do not deal with even a tenth of the Shari‘a,” we can understand
a main impetus of Dhahiri thought by which it differed from the four
schools of Sunni jurisprudence; namely, that it radically truncated the
range and relevance of the Shari‘a to nothing more than those rulings
established by the literal wording (dhahir) of hadiths or verses. And
this is perhaps one reason today for renewed interest in the long-dead
school, namely, that it frees people from having to learn and follow
the large part of the Shari‘a deduced from the general and
comprehensive ethos of the Qur’an and sunna.
But secondly, if
one reflects for a moment on the fiqh questions we hear urged today by
youthful reformers in our mosques, it is plain that a great many of
what are termed “Salafi ijtihads” are not salafi (early Muslim) at all,
but mere Dhahiri or literalist interpretations of hadiths. To their
credit, the movement we are speaking of has revived interest in hadith
among Islamic scholars across the board. But it has also given rise to
a bid‘a or ‘reprehensible innovation’; namely, that the emphasis on
hadith and its ancillary disciplines to the exclusion of other Islamic
sciences equally necessary to understanding the revelation, such as
fiqh methodology, or the conditioning of hadith by general principles
expressed in the Qur’an, has created a false dichotomy in many Muslims’
minds of either fiqh or hadith, where what is needed is fiqh or
‘understanding’ of hadith.
For example, a young man, after
leading us at salat al-fajr prayer in Chicago a few months ago, told a
latecomer to the first rak‘a (who had been finishing his sunna prayer
when the iqama (call to commence) was made): “If the prescribed prayer
begins, you don’t finish the sunna, but quit and join the group. Don’t
listen to Abu Hanifa, or Malik, or Shafi‘i; the hadith is clear: La
salata ba‘da al-iqama illa al-maktuba ‘There is no prayer after the
iqama except the prescribed one.’”
Now, the dhahir or ‘literal
meaning’ of the hadith was as he said, but the Imams of Shari‘a have
not understood it this way for the very good reason that Allah says in
Surat Muhammad of the Qur’an, “And do not nullify your works” (Qur’an
47:33), and to simply quit an act of worship—namely, the sunna rak‘as
before fajr—is precisely to nullify one of one’s works.
Scholars
rather understand the hadith to mean that one may not begin a sunna (or
other nafila) prayer after the call to commence (iqama) is given. And
this is very usual in human language: to use a general expression, in
this case, “There is no prayer” to mean a specific part or aspect of
it; namely, “There is no initiating a prayer.” Consider how the Qur’an
says, “Ask the village we were in, and the caravan that we came with”
(Qur’an 12:82), where the dhahir or literal meaning of village and
caravan; namely, the assemblage of stone huts and the string of pack
animals, are not things that can be asked—but rather a specific aspect
or part of them is intended; that is, the people of the village and the
people of the caravan, or rather, just some of them. There are many
similar expressions in every language, “Put the tea on the stove,” for
example, not meaning to heap the dried leaves on the stove, but rather
to put them in a pot, add water, and light the stove, and so on. It is
all the more surprising that anyone, Dhahiri or otherwise, could have
ever imagined that Arabic, with its incomparable richness in figures of
speech, could be so impoverished as to lack this basic expressive
faculty.
In reference to modern re-formers of Islam, such
literalism necessarily forces itself upon someone trained in hadith
alone, as most of them are, when they try to deduce Shari‘a rulings
without mastery of the interpretive tools needed to meet the challenges
that face the mujtahid, for example, in joining between a number of
hadiths on a particular question that seem to conflict, or the many
other intellectual problems involved in doing ijtihad. This has made
some contemporary Muslims seriously believe that it is a matter of
either following “the Qur’an and sunna,” or one of the schools of the
mujtahid Imams.
This idea has only gained credibility today
because so few Muslims understand what ijtihad is or how it is done. I
believe this can be cured by familiarizing Muslims with concrete
examples of how mujtahid Imams have derived particular Shari‘a rulings
from the Qur’an and hadith. Such examples would first show the breadth
of their hadith knowledge—Muhammad ibn ‘Ubayd Allah ibn al-Munadi, for
example, who died in 272 years after the Hijra, heard Ahmad ibn Hanbal
say that having memorized three hundred thousand hadiths was not enough
to be a mujtahid—and second, would show the mujtahids’ mastery of the
deductive principles that enabled them to join between all the primary
texts.
Until this is done, the advocates of this movement will
probably continue to follow the ijtihad of non-mujtahids (the sheikhs
who inspire their confidence), under the catch phrase “Qur’an and
sunna” just as if the real mujtahids were unfamiliar with these. The
followers perhaps cannot be blamed, since “for someone who has never
travelled, his mother is the only cook.” But I do blame the sheikhs
who, whatever their motivations, write and speak as if they were the
only cooks.
Finally, if the shortcomings of Dhahiri
interpretation is plain enough in fiqh, in ‘aqida, it can amount to
outright kufr, as when someone reads the Qur’anic verse,
“Today We forget you as you have forgotten this day of yours” (Qur’an 45:34),
and
affirms that Allah forgets, which is an imperfection, and not
permissible to affirm of Allah. Of this sort of literalism, Dawud
al-Dhahiri and Ibn Hazm were innocent, for this is anthropomorphism,
meaning to believe Allah has human attributes, and as such is beyond
the pale of Islam.
Regarding the second question that I received
in my letter, of whether Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was an anthropomorphist,
this is something that has been asked since early times, particularly
since someone forged an anthropormorphic tract called Kitab al-sunna
[The book of the sunna] and put the name of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s son
Abdullah on it. It was published in two volumes in Dammam, Saudi
Arabia, by Ibn al-Qayyim Publishing House, in 1986.
I looked
this book over with our teacher in hadith, Sheikh Shu‘ayb al-Arna’ut,
who had examined it one day, and said that at least 50 percent of the
hadiths in it are weak or outright forgeries. He was dismayed how
Muhammad al-Qahtani, the editor and commentator, could have been given
a Ph.d. in Islamic faith (‘aqida) from Umm al-Qura University in Mecca
for readying for publication a work as sadly wanting in authenticity as
this.
Ostensibly a “hadith” work, it contains some of the most
hard-core anthropomorphism found anywhere, such as the hadith on page
301 of the first volume that “when He Most Blessed and Exalted sits on
the Kursi, a squeak is heard like the squeak of a new leather saddle”;
or on page 294 of the same volume: “Allah wrote the Torah for Moses
with His hand while leaning back on a rock, on tablets of pearl, and
the screech of the quill could be heard. There was no veil between Him
and him,” or the hadith on page 510 of the second volume: “The angels
were created from the light of His two elbows and chest,” and so on.
The
work also puts lies in the mouths of major Hanbali scholars and others,
such as Kharija [ibn Mus‘ab al-Sarakhsi], who died 168 after the Hijra,
and who on page 106 of volume one is quoted about istiwa’ (sometimes
translated as being ‘established’ on the Throne), “Does istiwa’ mean
anything except sitting?”—with a chain of transmission containing a
liar (kadhdhab), an unidentifiable (majhul), plus the text, with its
contradiction (mukhalafa) of Islamic faith (‘aqida). Or consider the no
less than forty-nine pages of vilifications of Abu Hanifa and his
school that it mendaciously ascribes to major Imams, such as relating
on page 180 of the first volume that Ishaq ibn Mansur al-Kusaj, who
died 251 years after the Hijra said, “I asked Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, ‘Is a
man rewarded by Allah for loathing Abu Hanifa and his colleagues?’ and
he said, ‘Yes, by Allah.’” To ascribe things so fatuous to a man of
godfearingness (taqwa) like Ahmad, whose respect for other scholars is
well attested to by chains of transmission that are rigorously
authenticated (sahih), is one of the things by which this counterfeit
work overreaches itself, and ends in cancelling any credibility that
the name on it may have been intended to give it.
The
ascription of this book to Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s son ‘Abdullah fails from
a hadith point of view, since there are two unidentifiable (majhul)
transmitters in the chain of ascription whose names are given as
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Simsar and Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Harawi, of
whom no other trace exists anywhere, a fact that the editor and
commentator, Muhammad al-Qahtani, on page 105 of the first volume tries
to sweep under the rug by saying that the work was quoted by Ibn
Taymiya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya.
But the fact that such a
work even exists may give one an idea of the kinds of things that have
been circulated about Ahmad after his death, and the total lack of
scrupulousness among a handful of anthropomorphists who tried literally
everything to spread their innovations.
Another work with its
share of anthropomorphisms and forgeries is Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s
Ijtima‘ al-juyush al-Islamiyya [The meeting of the Islamic armies],
published by ‘Awwad al-Mu‘tiq in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, in 1988, which on
page 330 mentions as a hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace), the words “Honor the cow, for it has not lifted its head to
the sky since the [golden] calf was worshipped, out of shame (haya’)
before Allah Mighty and Majestic,” a mawdu‘ hadith forgery apparently
intended to encourage Muslims to believe that Allah is physically above
the cow in the sky.
On page 97 of the same work, Ibn al-Qayyim
also mentions the hadith of Bukhari, warning of the Antichrist
(al-Masih al-Dajjal), who in the Last Days will come forth and claim to
be God; of which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Allah has sent no prophet except that he warned his people of the One
Eyed Liar, and that he is one-eyed—and that your Lord is not
one-eyed—and that he shall have unbeliever (kafir) written between his
two eyes” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 8.172). Ibn al-Qayyim comments, “The
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) negated the attribute of
one-eyedness [of Allah], which is proof that Allah Most High literally
has two eyes.” Now, any primer on logical fallacies could have told Ibn
al-Qayyim that the negation of a quality does not entail the
affirmation of its contrary, an example of the “Black and White
Fallacy” (for example, “If it is not white, it is therefore black,” “If
you are not my friend, you must be my enemy,” and so on), though what
he attempts to prove here does show the kind of anthropomorphism he is
trying to promote. Forged chains of hadith transmission in Ibn
al-Qayyim’s Ijtima‘ al-juyush al-Islamiyya are the subject of a
forthcoming work by a Jordanian scholar, In Sha’ Allah, which those
interested may read.
For all of these reasons, the utmost care
must be used in ascribing tenets of faith to Ahmad ibn Hanbal or other
Imams, especially when made by anthropomorphists whose concern is to
create credibility for the ideas we are talking about. Many would-be
revivers of these ideas today have been misled by their uncritical
acceptance of the statements and chains of ascription found in the
books of Ibn Taymiya and Ibn al-Qayyim, which they cite in print and
rely on, and from whence they get the idea that these were the
positions of the early Muslims and prophetic Companions or Sahaba.
Umbrage
has unfortunately been taken at the biographies I appended to my
translation Reliance of the Traveller about Ibn Taymiya and Ibn
al-Qayyim, which detail the gulf between Ibn Taymiya’s innovations and
the ‘aqida of the early Muslims, though anyone interested can read
about it in any number of other books, one of the best of which has
been published in Cairo in 1970 by Dar al-Nahda al-‘Arabiyya, and is
called Ibn Taymiya laysa salafiyyan [Ibn Taymiya is not an early
Muslim], by the Azhar professor of Islamic faith (‘aqida) Mansur
Muhammad ‘Uways, which focuses primarily on tenets of belief. Another
was written by a scholar who lived shortly after Ibn al-Qayyim in the
same city, Taqi al-Din Abu Bakr al-Hisni, author of the famous Shafi‘i
fiqh manual Kifaya al-akhyar [The sufficiency of the pious], whose book
on Ibn Taymiya is called Daf‘ shubah man shabbaha wa tamarrada wa
nasaba dhalika ila al-sayyid al-jalil al-Imam Ahmad [Rebuttal of the
insinuations of him who makes anthropomorphisms and rebels, and
ascribes that to the noble master Imam Ahmad], published in Cairo in
1931 by Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya. Whoever reads these and
similar works with an open mind cannot fail to notice the hoax that has
been perpetrated by moneyed quarters in our times, of equating the
tenets of a small band of anthropomorphists to the Islamic belief
(‘aqida) of Imam Ahmad and other scholars of the early Muslims
(al-salaf).
The real (‘aqida) of Imam Ahmad was very simple,
and consisted, mainly of tafwid, that is, to consign to Allah the
meaning of the mutashabihat or ‘unapparent meanings’ of the Qur’an and
hadith, accepting their words as they have come without saying or
claiming to know how they are meant. His position is close to that of a
number of other early scholars, who would not even countenance changing
the Qur’anic order of the words or substituting words imagined to be
synonyms. For them, the verse in Sura Taha,
“The All-merciful is ‘established’ (istawa) upon the Throne” (Qur’an 20:5)
does
not enable one to say that “Allah is ‘established’ upon Throne,” or
that “The All-merciful is upon the Throne” or anything else besides
“The All-merciful is ‘established’ (istawa) upon the Throne.” Full
stop. Their position is exemplified by Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna, who died 98
years after the Hijra, and who said, “The interpretation (tafsir) of
everything with which Allah has described Himself in His book is to
recite it and remain silent about it.” It also resembles the position
of Imam Shafi‘i, who simply said: “I believe in what has come from
Allah as it was intended by Allah, and I believe in what has come from
the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) as it was
intended by the Messenger of Allah.”
It should be appreciated
how far this school of tafwid or ‘consigning the knowledge of what is
meant to Allah’ is from understanding the mutashabihat or ‘unapparent
in meaning,’ scriptural expressions about Allah as though they were
meant literally (‘ala al-dhahir). The Hanbali Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad
al-Khallal, who died in Hijra year 311, and who took his fiqh from Imam
Ahmad’s students, relates in his book al-Sunna through his chain of
narrators from Hanbal ibn Ishaq al-Shaybani, the son of the brother of
Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s father, that
Imam Ahmad was asked about the
hadiths mentioning “Allah’s descending,” “seeing Allah,” and “placing
His foot on hell”; and the like, and Ahmad replied: “We believe in them
and consider them true, without ‘how’ and without ‘meaning’ (bi la
kayfa wa la ma‘na).”
And he said, when they asked him about
Allah’s istiwa’ [translated above as established]: “He is ‘established’
upon the Throne (istawa ‘ala al-‘Arsh) however He wills and as He
wills, without any limit or any description that be made by any
describer (Daf‘ shubah al-tashbih, 28).
This demonstrates how
far Imam Ahmad was from anthropomorphism, though a third example is
even more explicit. The Imam and hadith master (hafiz) al-Bayhaqi
relates in his Manaqib al-Imam Ahmad [The memorable actions of Imam
Ahmad], through his chain of narrators that:
Ahmad condemned
those who said Allah was a “body,” saying, “The names of things are
taken from the Shari‘a and the Arabic language. The language’s
possessors have used this word [body] for something that has height,
breadth, thickness, construction, form, and composition, while Allah
Most High is beyond all of that, and may not be termed a “body” because
of being beyond any meaning of embodiedness. This has not been conveyed
by the Shari‘a, and so is rebutted” (al-Barahin al-sati‘a, 164).
These
examples provide an accurate idea of Ahmad’s ‘Aqida, as conveyed to us
by the hadith masters (huffaz) of the Umma, who have distinguished the
true reports from the spurious attributions of the anthropomorphists’
opinions to their Imam, both early and late. But it is perhaps even
more instructive, in view of the recrudescence of these ideas today, to
look at an earlier work against Hanbali anthropomorphists about this
bid‘a, for the light this literature sheds upon the science of textual
interpretation, and I will conclude my talk tonight to it.
As
you may know, the true architect of the Hanbali madhhab was not
actually Imam Ahmad, who did not like to see any of his positions
written down, but rather these were conveyed orally by various students
at different times, one reason there are often a number of different
narratives from him on legal questions. It is probably no exaggeration
to say that the real founder of the Hanbali madhhab was the Imam and
hadith master (hafiz) ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi, who died 597 years
after the Hijra, and who recorded all the narratives from Imam Ahmad,
distinguished the well-authenticated from the poorly-authenticated, and
organized them into a coherent body of fiqh jurisprudence.
Ibn
al-Jawzi—who is not to be confused with Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya—took
the question of people associating anthropomorphism with Hanbalism so
seriously that he wrote a book, Daf‘ shubah al-tashbih bi akaff
al-tanzih [Rebuttal of the insinuations of anthropomorphism at the
hands of transcendence], refuting this heresy and exonerating his Imam
of any association with it.
One of the most significant points
he makes in this work is the principle that al-Idafatu la tufidu
al-sifa, meaning that an ascriptive construction, called in Arabic an
idafa, ‘the x of the y’ or in other words, ‘y’s x’ does not establish
that ‘x is an attribute of y.’ This is important because the
anthropomorphists of his day, as well as Ibn Taymiyya in the seventh
century after the Hijra, used many ascriptive constructions (idafa)
that appear in hadiths and Qur’anic verses as proof that Allah had
“attributes” that bolstered their conceptions of Him.
To
clarify with examples, you are doubtless familiar with the Qur’anic
verse in Surat al-Fath of the Sahaba swearing a fealty pact (bay‘a) to
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), that says,
“Allah’s hand is above their hands” (Qur’an 48:10).
Here,
with the words yad Allahi ‘the hand of Allah,’ Ibn al-Jawzi’s principle
means that we are not entitled to affirm, on the basis of the Arabic
wording alone, that “Allah has a hand” as an attribute (sifa) of His
entity. It could be that this Arabic expression is simply meant to
emphasize the tremendousness of the offense of breaking this pact, as
some scholars state, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) placed his hand on top of the Sahaba’s, and the wording could be
a figure of speech emphasizing Allah’s backing of this action; and
classical Arabic abounds in such figures of speech. The Prophet himself
(Allah bless him and give him peace) used hand as a figure of speech in
the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith, Al-Muslimu man salima
l-Muslimuna min lisanihi wa yadih “The Muslim is he who the Muslims are
safe from his tongue and his hand,” where hand means anything within
his power to do to them, whether with his hand, his foot, or by any
other means. As Imam al-Ghazali says of the word hand:
One
should realize that hand may mean two different things. The first is
the primary lexical sense; namely, the bodily member composed of flesh,
bone, and nervous tissue. Now, flesh, bone, and nervous tissue make up
a specific body with specific attributes; meaning, by body, something
of an amount (with height, width, depth) that prevents anything else
from occupying wherever it is, until it is moved from that place.
Or
[secondly] the word may be used figuratively, in another sense with no
relation to that of a body at all: as when one says, “The city is in
the leader’s hands,” the meaning of which is well understood, even if
the leader’s hands are missing, for example (al-Ghazali, Iljam al-‘awam
‘an ‘ilm al-kalam [Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1406/1985], 55).
We
have already mentioned the school of thought of Ahmad ibn Hanbal,
Shafi‘i, and other early Muslims of understanding the mutashabihat or
‘unapparent in meaning,’ scriptural expressions about Allah by tafwid
or ‘consigning the knowledge of what is meant to Allah.’ But secondly,
we have seen from the example of the hand, that because of the
figurative richness the Arabic language, and also to protect against
the danger of anthropomorphism, many Muslim scholars were able to
explain certain of the mutashabihat or ‘unapparent in meaning’
expressions in Qur’anic verses and hadiths by ta’wil, or
‘figuratively.’
This naturally drew the criticism of
neo-Hanbalis, at their forefront Ibn Taymiya and Ibn al-Qayyim, as it
still does of today’s “reformers” of Islam, who echo these two’s
arguments that figurative interpretation (ta’wil) was a reprehensible
departure (bid‘a) by Ash‘aris and others from the way of the early
Muslims (salaf); and who call for a “return to the sunna,” that is, to
anthropomorphic literalism. Now, the obvious question in the face of
such “reforms” is whether literalism is really identical with pristine
Islamic faith (‘aqida). Or rather did figurative interpretation
(ta’wil) exist among the salaf? We will answer this question with
actual examples of mutashabihat or ‘unapparent in meaning’ Qur’anic
verses and hadiths, and examine how the earliest scholars interpreted
them:
1. Forgetting. We have mentioned above the Qur’anic verse,
“Today We forget you as you have forgotten this day of yours” (Qur’an 45:34),
which
the early Muslims used to interpret figuratively, as reported by a
scholar who was himself an early Muslim (salafi) and indeed, the sheikh
of the early Muslims in Qur’anic exegesis, the hadith master (hafiz)
Ibn Jarir al-Tabari who died 310 years after the Hijra, and who
explains the above verse as meaning: “‘This day, Resurrection Day, We
shall forget them,’ so as to say, ‘We shall abandon them to their
punishment.’” Now, this is precisely ta’wil, or interpretation in other
than the verse’s ostensive sense. Al-Tabari ascribes this
interpretation, through his chains of transmission, to the Companion
(Sahabi) Ibn ‘Abbas (Allah be well pleased with him) as well as to
Mujahid, Ibn ‘Abbas’s main student in Qur’anic exegesis (Jami‘
al-bayan, 8.202).
2. Hands. In the verse,
“And the sky We built with hands; verily We outspread [it]” (Qur’an 51:47),
al-Tabari
ascribes the figurative explanation (ta’wil) of with hands as meaning
“with power (bi quwwa)” through five chains of transmission to Ibn
‘Abbas, who died 68 years after the Hijra, Mujahid who died 104 years
after the Hijra, Qatada [ibn Da‘ama] who died 118 years after the
Hijra, Mansur [ibn Zadhan al-Thaqafi] who died 131 years after the
Hijra, and Sufyan al-Thawri who died 161 years after the Hijra (Jami‘
al-bayan, 27.7–8). I mention these dates to show just how early they
were.
3. Shin. Of the Qur’anic verse,
“On a day when shin shall be exposed, they shall be ordered to prostrate, but be unable” (Qur’an 68:42),
al-Tabari
says, “A number of the exegetes of the Companions (Sahaba) and their
students (tabi‘in) held that it [a day when shin shall be exposed]
means that a dire matter (amrun shadid) shall be disclosed” (Jami‘
al-bayan, 29.38)—the shin’s association with direness being that it was
customary for Arab warriors fighting in the desert to ready themselves
to move fast and hard through the sand in the thick of the fight by
lifting the hems of their garments above the shin. This was apparently
lost upon later anthropomorphists, who said the verse proved ‘Allah has
a shin,’ or, according to others, ‘two shins, since one would be
unbecoming.’ Al-Tabari also relates from Muhammad ibn ‘Ubayd
al-Muharibi, who relates from Ibn al-Mubarak, from Usama ibn Zayd, from
‘Ikrima, from Ibn ‘Abbas that shin in the above verse means “a day of
war and direness (harbin wa shidda)” (ibid., 29.38). All of these
narrators are those of the sahih or rigorously authenticated
collections except Usama ibn Zayd, whose hadiths are hasan or ‘well
authenticated.’
4. Laughter. Of the hadith related in Sahih
al-Bukhari from Abu Hurayra that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) said,
Allah Most High laughs about two men, one of
whom kills the other, but both of whom enter paradise: the one fights
in the path of Allah and is killed, and afterwards Allah forgives the
killer, and then he fights in the path of Allah and is martyred,
the
hadith master al-Bayhaqi records that the scribe of Bukhari [Muhammad
ibn Yusuf] al-Farabri related that Imam al-Bukhari said, “The meaning
of laughter in it is mercy” (Kitab al-asma’ wa al-sifat, 298).
5.
Coming. The hadith master (hafiz) Ibn Kathir reports that Imam
al-Bayhaqi related from al-Hakim from Abu ‘Amr ibn al-Sammak, from
Hanbal, the son of the brother of Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s father, that
Ahmad ibn Hanbal figuratively interpreted the word of Allah Most High,
“And your Lord shall come . . .” (Qur’an 89:22),
as meaning “His recompense (thawab) shall come.”
Al-Bayhaqi
said, “This chain of narrators has absolutely nothing wrong in it”
(al-Bidaya wa al-nihaya,10.342). In other words, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, like
the Companions (Sahaba) and other early Muslims mentioned above,
sometimes also gave figurative interpretations (ta’wil) to scriptural
expressions that might otherwise have been misinterpreted
anthropomorphically. This was also the way of Abul Hasan al-Ash‘ari,
founder of the Ash‘ari school of Islamic belief, who had two views
about the mutashabihat, the first being tafwid, or ‘consigning the
knowledge of what is meant to Allah,’ and the second being ta’wil or
‘figurative interpretation’ when needed to avoid the suggestion of the
anthropomorphism that is explicitly rejected by the Qur’an.
In
light of the examples quoted above about such words about Allah as
‘forgetting,’ ‘hands,’ ‘shin,’ ‘laughter,’ ‘coming,’ and so forth, it
is plain that Muslims scholars of ‘Aqida, whether of the Ash‘ari school
or any other, did not originate ta’wil or figurative interpretation,
but rather it had been with Muslims from the beginning, because that
was the nature of the Arabic language. And if the above figures are not
the salaf or ‘early Muslims,’ who are? Ibn Taymiya and Ibn al-Qayyim,
who died more than seven centuries after the Hijra?
In view of
the foregoing examples of figurative interpretation by early Muslims,
we have to ask, Whose ‘early Islam’ would today’s reformers of ‘Aqida
have us return to? Imam Abu Hanifa first noted, “Two depraved opinions
have reached us from East, those of Jahm [ibn Safwan], the nullifier of
the divine attributes, and those of Muqatil [ibn Sulayman al-Balkhi,
the likener of Allah to His creation” (Siyar a‘lam al-nubala,’ 7.202).
These
are not an either-or for Muslims. Jahm’s brand of Mu‘tazilism has been
dead for over a thousand years, while anthropomorphic literalism is a
heresy that in previous centuries was confined to a handful of sects
like the Hanbalis addressed by Imam Ibn al-Jawzi in his Daf‘ shubah
al-tashbih, or like the forgers of Kitab al-sunna who ascribed it to
Imam Ahmad’s son ‘Abdullah, or like the Karramiyya, an early sect who
believed Allah to be a corporeal entity “sitting in person on His
Throne.”
As for Islamic orthodoxy, the Imam of Ahl al-Sunna in
tenets of faith, ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi says in his ‘aqida manual
Usul al-din [The fundamentals of the religion]:
Anyone who
considers his Lord to resemble the form of a person [. . . ] is only
worshipping a person like himself. As for the permissibility of eating
the meat he slaughters or of marriage with him, his ruling is that of
an idol-worshipper.
. . . Regarding the anthropomorphists of
Khurasan, of the Karramiyya, it is obligatory to consider them
unbelievers because they affirm that Allah has a physical limit and
boundary from underneath, from whence He is contact with His Throne
(al-Baghdadi, Usul al-din [Istanbul: Matba‘a al-Dawla, 1346/1929], 337).
In
previous Islamic centuries, someone who worshipped a god who ‘sits,’
moves about, and so forth, was considered to be in serious trouble in
his faith (‘aqida). Our question should be: If anthropomorphic
literalism were an acceptable Islamic school of thought, why was it
counted among heresies and rejected for the first seven centuries of
Islam that preceded Ibn Taymiya and his student Ibn al-Qayyim, and
condemned by the scholars of Ahl al-Sunna thereafter?
To
summarize everything I have said tonight, we have seen three ways of
understanding the mutashabihat, or ‘unapparent in meaning’ verses and
hadiths: tafwid, ‘consigning the knowledge of what is meant to Allah,’
ta’wil, ‘figurative interpretation within the parameters of classical
Arabic usage,’ and lastly tashbih, or ‘anthropomorphic literalism.’
We
saw that the way of tafwid or ‘consigning the knowledge of what is
meant to Allah,’ was the way of Shafi‘i, Ahmad, and many of the early
Muslims. A second interpretive possibility, the way of ta’wil, or
‘figurative interpretation,’ was also done by the Companions (Sahaba)
and many other early Muslims as reported above. In classical
scholarship, both have been considered Islamic, and both seem needed,
though tafwid is superior where it does not lead to confusion about
Allah’s transcendence beyond the attributes of created things, in
accordance with the Qur’anic verse,
“There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him” (Qur’an 42:11).
As
for anthropomorphism, it is clear from this verse and from the entire
history of the Umma, that it is not an Islamic school of thought, and
never has been. In all times and places, Islam has invited non-Muslims
to faith in the Incomparable Reality called Allah; not making man a
god, and not making God a man.
Wa jazakum Allah khayran, wa l-hamdu li Llahi Rabbil ‘Alamin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY :
Author : Shaykh Nuh Keller
Copyright : © Shaykh Nuh Keller
Retrieved from : Mas’ud Ahmad Khan’s Web Presence
