[1] More "Salafi" aberrations
Fouad Haddad
[1] MORE "SALAFI" ABERRATIONS REGARDING THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
AND THE VIEWS OF AHL AL-SUNNA CONCERNING THESE ABERRATIONS
The aberrations of the anthropomorphists with regard to the verses
and hadiths of the attributes are easily detectible after a little
preparation. Thus they will add "in person" (bi al-dhat) or
"literally" (haqiqatan) to the mention of verse 20:5 claiming that
this was the way of the Salaf and the Four Imams. Worse, they
declare as innovators and misguided (and sometimes as
disbelievers) those who give a figurative interpretation of the
attributes, claiming that this was never the way of the Salaf and
the Four Imams. Yet as we have shown already and will show again
in the next section insha Allah, the Prophet, the Companions, the
Salaf and the Four Imams did sometimes apply figurative
interpretation, and never did the expressions "in person" or
"literally" in relation to the attributes gain acceptance among
them. Rather, these breaches of the Salaf's bila kayf were
practiced by Wahhabis and "Salafis," who worked to alter the
method of the Salaf. Here are some of their aberrant examples
past and present.
Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab's Fatwa
On "yad Allah" and "istawa"
Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Wahhab declares in one of his fatwas
collected in Majmu`at al-rasa'il:
He who believes that the meaning of Allah's hand in verses
such as "Allah's hand is over their hand" is His power; or
that Allah's establishment (istiwa') is his overpowering
(istila'), or that Allah is in every place, is an ignorant,
misguided innovator who has contravened the Salafi doctrine
(al-`aqida al-salafiyya) followed by the Prophet, his
Companions, and their pious followers such as the Four Imams
and the scholars who succeded them, but he is not declared an
unbeliever until he insists on following his belief after
being corrected about it.(1)
It is strange that he shuns the name "Islam" given by Allah
to His religion, and he shuns the name "Ahl al-Sunna" used by
Muslims to refer to those of sound belief, naming it instead "the
Salafi doctrine," an invented name in Islam suggesting that there
is more than one doctrine among Ahl al-Sunna. What is worse, he
makes the Prophet the adherent of a doctrine -- his doctrine --
when in fact it is the Salaf who are by the very definition of the
term "Salaf" the adherents and followers of the Prophet!
Another incoherence is his piling together the belief of
Sunnis and those of Jahmis, who believed that Allah is in every
place. By mixing together the mention of Ahl al-Sunna and that of
the Jahmis, he allows himself to condemn both of them as one and
the same group. This is a common device of Wahhabi and "Salafi"
arguments today.
One of the obvious proofs that his practice departs from the
school of Imam Ahmad is that the latter, although he faced the
Jahmi heresy at its peak, never declared the Jahmis disbelievers,
nor the rest of the Mu`tazila. Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab may be said to
be following Ibn Taymiyya's ideas in this matter.
Finally, we have already seen the many interpretations of the
Hand as Power, Mercy, or Generosity among the Four Imams and their
schools. The interpretation of the Establishment as the
overpowering is in the same line. On the other hand if Ibn `Abd
al-Wahhab is implying, by his words, a spatial establishment over
the Throne, then as we quoted before, this convicts him of
disbelief by consensus.
They Specify Limbs and Places for Allah
The views of Muhammad ibn Nasir ibn Mu`ammar al-Najdi al-Tamimi
(d. 1810 CE), one of the students of Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab and of his
brother Sulayman, are collected in Al-hadiyya alsaniyya wa al-
tuhfa al-wahhabiyya al-najdiyya and in Majmu`at al-rasa'il wa al-
masa'il al-najdiyya. He declares in the latter:
Allah is on the Throne, and the Chair (kursi) is where He
places His feet... He is on His Throne, but He has no limits.(2)
This sheds new light on Darimi's claim that to say "Allah has
no limits" was the invention of Jahm ibn Safwan.(3) At the same
time, the literal understanding of Ibn `Abbas's saying: "the Chair
is where He places His two feet"(4) conforms with Darimi's ideas
and those of the anthropomorphists of Ibn al-Jawzi's time. We
repeat what al-Qurtubi said in his Tadhkira: "The mujassim -- one
who attributes a body to Allah -- is an idol-worshipper," and
Ghazali's statement in the Iljam: "Whoever worships a body is a
disbeliever according to the consensus of the Community." The
correct understanding of Ibn `Abbas's statement is, as Ibn al-
Jawzi said, to represent the smallness of the Chair in relation to
the Throne.(5) This is confirmed by Ibn `Abbas' own explanation of
the Throne as cited by al-Khazin in his tafsir of 2:255 as meaning
Allah's knowledge, which Ibn Kathir cites with his chain of
transmission through Ibn Abi Hatim.(6) This is also the meaning
given by Nasafi.(7)
Another Wahhabi fatwa states in the same book: "The denial
that Allah is on the Throne is disbelief."(8) This is also found
in a fatwa given by Ibn Khuzayma which goes on to state that he
must be killed unless he repents.(9) According to Ibn Khuzayma,
therefore, Imam al-Baydawi must be killed, along with every Muslim
that is not an anthropomorphist. Another descendent of Ibn `Abd
al-Wahhab declares:
The meaning of istawa in verse 20:5 is: He settled Himself
(istaqarra) and ascended (irtafa`a) and rose above (`ala),
and all three of them are one meaning which none but a Jahmi
atheist will deny in order to divest Allah from His names and
attributes.(10)
According to this Wahhabi descendent, then, Imam Abu Hanifa and
his school are Jahmi atheists for saying: "We assert that Allah is
established on the throne without His need (haja) nor settlement
(istiqrar) upon it"!(11) This condemnation was indeed the position
of some of the literalists, such as the early narrator Yazid ibn
Harun, who is reported by Bukhari in his Khalq af`al al-`ibad as saying:
Whoever claims that the Merciful is established on the Throne
in any other way than what occurs in the mind of the
uneducated is a Jahmi, and Muhammad al-Shaybani (Abu Hanifa's
student) is a Jahmi.(12)
This is clearly a gross and unwarranted attack on an actual enemy
of the Jahmis, reminiscent of the attack of al-Dhuhli on Bukhari
for saying that the pronunciation of Qur'an is created, and the
Wahhabi Mashhur Al Salman's suggestion that Bukhari is a Jahmi,
which we cite further down. How could Muhammad al-Shaybani be a
Jahmi when he wrote the following lines, cited by Ibn Hajar in the Fath:
The scholars of the Law have agreed from East to West that
belief is obligatory in Allah's attributes as mentioned in
the Qur'an and the hadiths conveyed from the Prophet by the
trustworthy narrators, without likening Allah to creation and
without explaining them. Whoever explains them and says what
Jahm says has departed from the practice of the Prophet and
the Companions and parted with the Congregation of Muslims,
because He has described His Lord as nothing.(13)
The truth is that some of the anthropomorphists took the
words of the Salaf originally meant against Jahm and turned them
against Ahl al-Sunna, including some of the Salaf like Bukhari,
Ibn Hibban, and al-Shaybani. Ibn Taymiyya mastered the practice of
attacking anti-anthropomorphists and calling them Jahmis, like al-
Razi and the Ash`aris, although none of the scholars before him
ever suggested that the Ash`aris were other than Ahl al-Sunna,
unlike the Jahmis. This blurring of the boundaries and misnaming
within Islam serves until now to deflect attention from the
deviation of the mujassima themselves. One might say that Imam Abu
Hanifa had foreseen this state of affairs when he said: "Two
heresies have come to us from the East: Jahm who divests Allah of
His attributes, and Muqatil who likens Allah to creation."(14)
Although many of the true Salaf cited the meanings of
irtafa`a and `ala for istawa in 20:5 as we already mentioned, none
of them cited istaqarra because -- unlike the other two -- it
cannot be interpreted figuratively, and suggests anthropomorphism.
In the mind of Wahhabis, however, istaqarra is the paramount
meaning for the verse, to which other meanings come second. We
have already cited Ibn Battal and Ibn al`Arabi's statement that
istaqarra typifies the anthropomorphists. Thus the bizarre
assertion of `Abd al-Rahman ibn Hasan whereby "all three of them
are one meaning," although "to settle" has nothing to do with
"rising" or "ascending," betrays his intention of gaining
acceptance for the meaning "to settle" by trying to amalgamate it
with long established meanings. In fact it is contradicted by
those of the same school: Albani declares in his Mukhtasar al-
`uluw that the attribution of istaqarra to Allah is groundless and
impermissible!(15) This is important in view of Ibn Taymiyya and
Ibn Qayyim's refusal to declare such impermissibility: the former
defines istawa' as "sa`ida (he climbed), `ala (he towered high),
irtafa`a (he rose), istaqarra (he settled),"(16) while they both,
as we already mentioned, consider with al-Khallal that Allah and
the Prophet sit on the Throne together.(17) Thus on the one hand
`Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal, `Uthman al-Darimi, Ibn Taymiyya,
Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Hasan Al al-Shaykh Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab, and, as
shown further down, Ibn `Uthaymin, all accept istaqarra as a
meaning for istawa in 20:5, while Albani rejects it. Finally, `Abd
al-Rahman ibn Hasan's familiar accusation of Jahmism, again,
provides the usual smokescreen: for the real atheist is he who
tampers with the way of Ahl al-Sunna and tries to pass on to
others his delusion that the moon is made of green cheese.
(1) Rasa'il wa fatawa li al-shaykh Muhammad ibn `Abd al-
Wahhab wa abna'ih, p. 14 (Question 14).
(2) Majmu`at al-rasa'il wa al-masa'il al-najdiyya, ed.
Muhammad Rashid Rida (Cairo: Matba`at al-manar, 1345/1926) Pt. 1 *
3, p. 560.
(3) Ibn Sa`id al-Darimi, Kitab al-naqd p. 23. See above.
(4) Al-Hakim (sahih) 2:282, confirmed by Dhahabi, and by
Haythami in Majma` al-zawa'id 6:323.
(5) Cf. Ibn al-Jawzi, Daf` shubah al-tashbih p. 258.
(6) Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Beirut: Dar al-fikr ed.) 1:381.
(7) Al-Khazin and al-Nasafi in Majma` al-tafasir 1:398-399.
(8) Majmu`at al-rasa'il al-najdiyya, Pt. 1 *1, p. 198.
(9) Cited by Ahmad ibn Hajar Al Butami in his book al-`Aqa'id
al-salafiyya p. 139.
(10) `Abd al-Rahman ibn Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Wahhab
in Majmu`at al-tawhid al-najdiyya cited in Ibn Khalifa `Ulyawi al-
Azhari's book: Hadhihi `aqidatu al-salaf wa al-khalaf fi dhat
Allahi ta`ala wa sifatihi wa af`alihi wa al-jawab al-sahih li ma
waqa`a fihi al-khilaf min al-furu` bayna al-da`in li al-salafiyya
wa atba` al-madhahib al-arba`a al-islamiyya (This is the doctrine
of the Predecessors and the Descendants concerning the divergences
in the branches between those who call to al-salafiyya and the
followers of the Four Islamic Schools of Law) (Damascus: Matba`at
Zayd ibn Thabit, 1398/1977) p. 19.
(11) Abu Hanifa, Wasiyyat al-imam al-a`zam Abu Hanifa, ed.
Fu'ad `Ali Rida (Beirut : Maktabat al-Jamahir, 1970) p. 10.
(12) Bukhari, Khalq af`al al-`ibad p. 15.
(13) Muhammad al-Shaybani as cited in Ibn Hajar's Fath al-
Bari (Beirut 1989 ed.) 13:501.
(14) In al-Dhahabi, Siyar a`lam al-nubala' 7:202.
(15) Albani, Mukhtasar al-`uluw p. 17.
(16) Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ta'sis al-radd `ala asas al-taqdis
1:568. See also Abu Hayyan, Tafsir al-nahr al-madd 1:254 (Ayat al-kursi).
(17) Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu` al-fatawa 4:374; Ibn Qayyim,
Bada'i` al-fawa'id 4:39-40. (Cairo: al-matba`a al-muniriyya,
1900?) 4:39-40; al-Khallal, Kitab al-sunna p. 209-268, commentary
on the verse: "It may be that your Lord will raise you to an
exalted station" (17:79).
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani's
_Repudiation of "Salafi" Innovations_ (KAZI, 1996) p. 183-189.
Blessings and Peace on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions.
Abu Hammad