Ali Ataie – Promulgation & Subsequent Codification of Orthodox Islamic Creed
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So, as we move along here,
I'm gonna have to define some terminology for
you so that we're on the same page.
So the word creed,
first of all, comes from a Latin word
credo, which means I believe.
In Greek, we say pisteuo,
from pistis, I believe. Things I have faith
in.
So the word in
Arabic,
is
which, the root so it's a from a
trilateral root.
Which means to tie or to bind or
to or to
to hold down, to tie a knot.
So the word bukhda, you'll find in the
Quran, for example,
the, prayer of Moses of the burning bush,
the praise to God. According to the Quran,
he says,
literally,
unravel
the knot from my tongue, which is translated,
of course, remove the impediment
from my speech. So this is, the cognate
of this,
in the Hebrew is the same letters, agim,
pov, and dalet.
And just as a side note, this word,
apida, actually comes directly from,
a word in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis
chapter 22.
Abraham binds his son Isaac,
and the Hebrew says
means then he bound his son. And that
passage in the Hebrew bible is called
Haqaydah.
The Haqaydah, the binding or the bounding
of Isaac.
So Aqidah means
a set of beliefs that are binding upon
every Muslim. Every Muslim is a it's it's
incumbent upon every Muslim
to believe,
in these tenants.
So when we talk about creed, we're essentially
talking about 3 areas
of study.
Three major areas as you can see on
the handout, the first area is known as
theology,
which is ilah iat,
who is God, what are the attributes of
God,
what are the conceivabilities
for God, what are the inconceivabilities
for God. Now early orthodox
dialecticians, which are called,
they actually had to come up with a
working definition for God. And you're probably thinking,
well, how can you define God? How can
you express,
the infinite with finite language and so on
and so forth? We have to understand that
they had to do this out of necessity.
Why did they have to do it out
of necessity? Because,
this is very important, the nature of credo
language is that it's polemical,
it's responsive,
it's reactionary.
They're responding to certain elements within the tradition
that are saying things that they deemed to
be heterodox or not correct. We'll talk about
what that means. So their definition of that
is very simple. They say,
the one who has
vital existence.
He's deserving of every perfection.
And he is transcendent or he is free
from every type of deficiency.
And of course, there's a very broad definition.
Jews and Christians would also agree with this
definition,
but it sort
of puts us in the right direction,
so to speak.
So this why do Muslims study creed? It's
actually,
creed because it acts as a protection against
deviant police. That's number 1. And the other
reason is, it's incumbent upon every Muslim
to love God.
Right? So this is the ultimate goal of
studying theology,
and ever, like I said, every Muslim has
to have some level of theological education,
in order to have a relationship
with God. So the Muslim scholars say, before
there's Mahatba,
before there's love of God, there must be
gnosis of God, there must be You
must have knowledge in order to love something.
You can't love something you don't know, this
is the philosophy behind it. So Muslims believe
in this doctrine known as progressive revelation,
where,
this aspect is not new to the Islamic
tradition. This is something that's found in the
previous revelations and dispensations,
as Muslims would say. For example, very quickly
in Mark chapter 12, a scribe comes to
Jesus and says, what is the greatest commanded?
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1. And then he continues and
he says, and he's quoting from the Torah,
and he says,
And you must love the Lord thy God
with all of thy heart.
And the construction in Hebrew, you have a
conjunction with a perfect tense which makes it
imperative.
You must love the lord thy god with
all of thy heart,
with
all of thy strength and with all of
thy being. So this is something that is
the point of studying theology. This is the
goal, this is the aim, this is the
objective of studying theology.
It is to draw near to the divine.
Right?
So it's not something where a Muslim will
learn all of these different,
do's and don'ts, and these different parameters and
whatnot, and just be able to rehash them
like a parrot. That's not the point of
it. Even though that's important, we should we
should know Muslims are taught to know the
parameters of their belief and what's acceptable and
whatnot, but that's not the ultimate goal of
it.
So that's the first area is theology. The
second area is known as prophetology
or nubuwaz.
So this deals with the nature and function
of profits,
the conceivability for profits, the inconceivability
for profits. Now there are certain Muslims known
as,
the Aisha'id. We'll talk about who the Aisha'id.
It's an acceptable school of theology amongst the
tradition
that will take a subcategory of
called mystical prophetology,
and this deals with,
what's known as the reality of the Mohammed
in nature,
or the idea
that the prophet Muhammad has ontological
or temporal precedence over the rest of creation.
Not a,
an an an essential or absolute preexistence,
that's only for God. But the sense that
the prophet is the best of creation,
while he was sent last in temporality
and time. His creation, the creation of his
soul actually predates the creation of Adam.
Whether whether Muslims believe in this or not,
at the end of the day is a
little consequence, because either way the prophet is
still creation, and this is the whole point,
that there's nothing uncreated except God and its
attributes.
So this roughly approximates
the Arian position represented at Nicaea 325. The
group of Christians that had that held that
very position about Jesus. They called Jesus katissima
televon,
the best of creation.
Their motto was,
which is Greek, which means, there was a
time when he was not. There was a
time when Jesus was not. This type of
belief, is probably influenced the early theologians of
the Ashanti tradition as well.
The third area of study is called superrational
transmissions.
These are semi yat in Arabic. So these
are events that are incumbent upon every Muslim
to believe in. Okay? But these are events
that are only known through what's known as
nakal or revelation.
So these are events
that are known through a text of some
sort that Muslims believe to be sacred.
For example, the Quran, which is the uncreated
pre eternal speech of God according to
the Islamic theologians,
or hadith.
Okay? Hadith are rigorously authenticated statements
attributed to the prophet Muhammad.
And when theologians look at the hadith, the
statements of the prophet, because there's millions of
hadith under different grades and whatnot, they only
take the best of the best to derive
creedal statements from. To make sure that the
most that there's no dissension,
most people believe in it, so it's easier
to canonize. So they would take hadith that
have reached a level known as tawato,
multiple attestation. There's only less than a 1,000
of those hadith out of the something 3,000,000
hadith.
Okay. So
so,
the super rational transmissions, for example, what's an
example of a super rational transmission? Like the
night journey and ascension of the prophet.
Right? Or the standing on the concourse
on on the day of judgment.
Right? These are things that are only known
through Revelation.
Can't prove these things empirically. Right? Can't prove
very much empirically. But since they're mentioned in
Revelation, and they're multiple detested,
it's incumbent upon Muslims to believe in them.
The intercession of the prophet, for example, a
day of judgment. Many things crossing the bridge,
for example, the questioning in the grave.
So the study of Islamic creed not only
deals with what
Muslims believe, but why do they believe it.
Okay? But language cannot describe the reality of
faith, that's ineffable. And we're not we're not
trying to describe what faith is or what
experiential theology is. We're only using language to
describe what Muslims believe
and why do they believe it. What were
the forces, theological,
social, historical, and otherwise,
that motivated early formulaic creole articulations
by the scholars of Ahlul Sunnah wal Jama'a.
So this title,
that's the that's the large title of Sunni
Orthodoxy.
Okay? So when you hear when you're gonna
hear me say Sunni Orthodoxy, I'm referring to
Agha Sunnah 1 Jama'a, which literally means the
people of the prophetic
precedent
and the majority.
Okay?
So
one of my professors at, GTU,
Jean Francois Racine, he studied under Bart Ehrman,
who is, of course, famous for misquoting Jesus,
orthodox, corruption, scripture, whatnot. He's an expert of,
in the field of, textual criticism in the
New Testament. He he coined a a a
term, which I'm going to use, I think
it's a brilliant term, called Proto Orthodox.
Proto Orthodox
were the forerunners of orthodoxy.
So proto orthodox scholars
represented
what would eventually become standard belief in that
tradition.
So this is before creeds were codified.
Okay?
We call them proto orthodox, of course, versus
the heterodox.
Heteronos in Greek meaning other.
Right? So this is considered to be a
deviant position. This probably takes cue from Paul's
letter to the Galatians
when he chastises them for believing in
or another gospel, a different gospel, a heretical
gospel.
So orthodoxy straight thinking, heterodoxy deviant teaching.
Salute will utilize this term proto orthodoxy,
which will be used interchangeably
with proto Sunni.
So scholars are Muslim scholars who represented what
eventually would become the standard Sunni belief,
Forerunners of Islamic orthodoxy.
So very quickly, just very very quickly, because
it'll help us to give us some it'll
help us conceptualize.
We're going to see what happened in the
Christian tradition.
There are obvious parallels, it'll help us conceptualize.
So there's a 3 step,
there's 3 steps in in creole canonization,
and it usually takes about 4 centuries. Ironically,
this took 4 centuries in Christianity and in
Islam. The first step is called proclamation,
which leads to a clarification,
And then you have a codification or canonization.
This usually takes
4 centuries.
Took about 4 centuries in the Christian tradition
and the Islamic tradition. So I'll give you
an example very quickly. So you have Jesus
and his disciples who believe certain tenants.
They have faith convictions, they proclaim them. It's
called the Kerugma, the early Christian proclamation.
By the end of the 1st century, maybe
earlier to 4th century, you have all of
these different groups coming out,
having different Christologies, different ideas of who Jesus
was, different soteriologies,
different ideas or concepts of salvation.
So you have groups like Ebionites, and Marcionites,
and Patriopasianism, and Modalists, and all the Gnostics,
and the docetite, all of these different groups
claiming to be in the Christian tradition, and
then you have the proto orthodox Christians.
Now, most of these groups had their share
of specialists.
They have speculative theologians, they have polemical theologians.
What did they do? They busied themselves writing
refutations
of their opponents
and clarifying their positions.
Okay? So they would
busy themselves writing refutations of their opponents and
clarifying
their positions.
So the Porto Orthodox Christian Fathers, for example,
like Clement and Origen, Justin, Irenaeus,
Eusebius,
many many more. So by the 4th century,
you have the time of the great codifiers.
By the 4th century of the of the
Christian era, The great codifiers, like Athanasius of
Alexandria,
in the,
Greek East, Augustine of Hippo in the Latin
West, Cappadocian church fathers, Asia Minor, the 2
great Greeks Saint Basil.
What did they do? They refined
and systematized
the beliefs of their of their proto proto
orthodox
predecessors. They refined and systematized
their belief. Therefore, the earliest proto orthodox Christian
creeds come from this period of 4th century,
the Apostolic Creed, the Athenian Creed, the Nicene
Creed after 325,
the Nicene Constantino Policing Creed after 381, which
is the most orthodox creed.
Okay. So following this line, now we can
look at Islam, what happened in the Islamic
tradition. So similarly,
you have the prophet Muhammad and his disciples,
and the prophet lived from 570
to 632
of the common era,
and they likewise
proclaimed a message known as a Risada. So
it was called a Kerugma in the Christian
tradition. In the Islamic tradition, it's called the
Risala.
Now here's something interesting. The first generation of
Muslims,
the first generation known as the Sahaba,
they did not engage in speculative discourse. What's
known as eghamul kalam.
They didn't engage in kalam.
There was no need for it.
Right? They never asked the questions. For example,
was the Quran created? It never even occurred
to them. Do human beings create their own
actions? These things weren't brought up until later.
They were issues until later.
Like like today,
the theists are asked questions like, you know,
if, God is omnipotent,
you know, it's the the stone conundrum. Right?
Can he create a stone that's too heavy
for him to lift? Can
God just what was the one? Can he
can he warm up a burrito so hot
that he can't eat it? Or he say,
you know, where is God? Who created God?
This type of thing. Right? These questions didn't
even occur for the 1st generation, and I
think part of the reason why is they
experienced their theology. There was no reason to
question it. They experienced it. They're with the
prophet,
and they saw him perform,
these miracles reportedly.
So this was never an issue with them.
And likewise, the original disciples of Jesus, they
experienced their theology. So these questions weren't brought
up until much later.
But you get into the 2nd and third,
generations,
and as the empire, the Islamic empire is
growing,
under the Umayyad and the Abbasid Dynasties.
Now you have,
Jewish and Byzantine,
and Persian peoples becoming Muslim,
and then,
looking at Islam through their own hermeneutical lens,
so to speak. Right? So now these different
ideas
start coming up. Also, Muslims,
came into contact with seasoned Jewish and Christian
Hellenized philosophers.
So many of these issues were raised. So
what happened now, it necessitated
it necessitated
reason to responses
and clarifications
from these proto Sunni scholars.
It was necessary. Again, creole language
is by its nature responsive.
It refutes heresies.
It clarifies
positions.
Right? So the classic example,
is,
the Lagos
of the Yochanan gospel. So when when Islam
went into the Levant or a sham in
Syria and into Egypt,
Christian philosophers had heard of the Quranic revelation
referred to Jesus Christ.
So they were wondering, is this and the
Quran type refers to Jesus as the word
of God. Right?
The angel said, oh Mary, God gives you
glad tidings of a word from him, Ishmael
Masir, who was called Christ, Esav Numeriam, Jesus
the son of Mary.
So
these, Hellenized Christian philosophers would ask the Muslims,
is this the Lagos of the Johannine gospel?
Right? John 11,
where it says what? N r k ein
Lagos, in the beginning was the word.
Right? Which,
implies
that the word has an essential pre existence.
And the word was with God. Meaning that
the word has a separate and distinct entity
or or existence, but there's some dynamic relationship
with God.
And God was the word. They share an
essential nature. So it necessitated, obviously it's not
the same concept as the kari matullo or
the concept of Christ in Islam. But this
is just an example of how or why
Muslim theologians began now to study,
Christian,
theology in order to formulate
reason the responses to what they were hearing.
Right?
However,
the first sectarian,
had nothing to do with outside influences,
meaning
Hellenistic, Jewish, Christian, Byzantine, or Persian. So I'm
gonna so it's on the sheet here. I'm
going to, go through these these heterodox groups
of, of Muslims,
and demonstrate to you,
how
these groups influenced
the codification,
right, the canonization
of Islamic
formulaic
credal articulations.
How did these groups influence credal literature?
The first group I'm gonna talk about are
known as the Khawarij.
The Khwarej meaning cecedars or the Kharijites.
This was actually at the time of the
first generation, towards the end of the first
generation of Muslims
in the 7th century.
They, were nomadic Bedouin for the most part.
They were not trained by any of the
companions of the prophets, at least that's the
Muslim claim.
They espoused a very puritanical type of fire
and brimstone,
theology. They believed that if a Muslim committed
a mortal sin, then they got apostated from
the community, and it was their right to
kill that person. So they would actually go
down into
cities and hamlets, and they would raid them,
and they would indiscriminately
massacre
everyone. Montgomery Walk calls,
calls their actions pure pure or sheer terrorism.
So obviously, this we have an element of
neo coavage,
in the world today as well. They're very
exclusivism.
Right? If you didn't believe exactly what I
believed, then you're not even a Muslim. This
type very exclusive, this type of beliefs.
They would anathematize,
companions of the prophet who did not believe
as they believe. In other words, would make
tough fear of them. Anesthetized means they would
declare them as being apostates, it would kill
them. So the 4th caliph, for example, his
name was Ali. He was the nephew of
the prophet. He was killed by a man
of the Khawarij in Kufa, Iraq in 6/61
of the common era. Man's name was, Abdulrahman
ibn
al Murad I Istab, the caliph Ali as
he was leaving the mosque.
So that's the first group, the Khawarij. So
that's what they believe. If you commit a
a mortal sin, whether it's a small sin
from the minor sin,
or from the major sins, the kavahim.
You forfeited the rights of community, you apostate
it,
and you are to be killed.
This type of mentality.
The second group are called the Shia. Now,
I'm coming from a Sunni perspective.
Right? So if there's if I was a
Shia, for example, you would hear a very
different story. Right? So I'm coming from the
perspective of a Sunni Muslim.
So the Shia partisans of Ali, these are
viewed as diametrically close to the Khawarij.
In other words, they,
would come to believe that the 4th caliph
Ali was an infallible imam or leader.
Infallible. So they impute upon him a prophetic
attribute, as Muslims believe the prophets are infallible
or free of major sin,
and that he was ordained by God. The
Shia believed that Adi was ordained by God
to inherit
the temporal,
caliphate, the temporal kingdom
of the prophet, and they also believe certain
companions of the prophet,
took advantage of the situation of the death
of the prophet, and usurped power in order
to take the caliphate
away from the caliph,
Ali. This is the largest sectarian today in
the Muslim world, the Shia. The third group
are called the Mujassima,
the anthropomorphous.
Right?
So these are people who made literal
or interpretation
of Quranic verses that ostensibly
that apparently
indicated,
anthropomorphism.
For example, in the Quran, you read the
which can be translated the eye of God
or which
can be translated
the hand of God or the Saab, the
Shin. Right? So the anthropomorphism, the Mujassima, they
would take these verses as literal. So God
literally has
a hand. It's made of substance.
He's in he's located in his creation.
He's physically seated on the throne. He's wearing
a robe. He has certain facial features like
that. Very anthropomorphic.
Right? They're giving they're ascribing human qualities or
or created qualities
to the divine.
Right?
So they say God has just a more
of that. He has a compartmentalized
body, for example.
He dwells within his creation. So this idea
of of substance,
right, Ajiram in Arabic, this was also found
to be very problematic amongst
Christian theologians in the late 4th century. In
the Nicene Creed, it says that Jesus shares
a substantia with God, and they found this
they found this term substantia to be,
scandalous. So they removed it from the term,
from the creed in 381 of the common
era. Muslims had a similar,
run-in with the word substance, with the majesima.
And God is not made of substance,
but Quran says,
that there's nothing like God. And one of
the, attributes of God, according to theologians is
which
means that he is completely
dissimilar to creation. And that's eventually became the
Sunni position, the orthodox
position. Other groups, the Jabariya,
these are the determinist,
they said that man has no absolute
man has no volition, he has no free
will. He is compelled to act, therefore, he
is not taken to account, which means eventually,
they came to deny the existence of *.
Right? Right? And of course, * is from
the super rational transmissions. It's mentioned in hadith,
it's mentioned in Quran, so that was deemed
unacceptable position.
And then you have Qadariah, the dualist.
Man has absolute volition.
God has nothing to do with evil nothing
to do with evil. He didn't create it.
He's not he's not pleased with it. He
didn't has nothing to do with it. So
this was their answer to theodicy, the problem
of evil in the world. They were called
the Muslim
Zoroastrians, because Zoroastrians were dualistic, leaving 2 gods.
Right? God of good, God of evil.
The most challenging group to the Proto Sunni
or Puerto Orthodox
were the rationalist,
the the
rationalist.
And part of the reason that they were
so challenging is because they actually ruled the
caliphate
for over 200 years. So they were the
ones in power for over 200 years, and
they would actually,
they would persecute proto orthodox scholars,
for espousing certain beliefs. For example, the Muerteselite
caliphs,
believe that the Quran was created. This was
a major issue
back during this time. Is the Quran created?
Is it uncreated?
So So the most satisfying position is the
Quran is created. The Sunni position is that
it's uncreated.
So any scholar that that espoused that the
Quran or taught his flock, that the Quran
was,
was,
uncreated,
was sometimes tortured, persecuted, sometimes killed.
One such scholar, Ahmad ibn Uhambal, who is
a scholar who got his own,
codified school of jurisprudence.
He had reached a level of complete juristic
and methodological
independence known as Ijihad Mudlak. He was actually
tortured by the caliph,
Mahmoon because he said the Quran is uncreated.
There's another scholar, Imam Shafi'i,
who also was summoned to the caliph, and
the caliph asked him, do you say that
the Quran is
is uncreated?
And he was very clever. So, Imam Shafi'i,
he, he he said the the Torah,
the gospel, the Psalms in the Quran, all
of them are created.
Right? So the caliph said, oh, great, you
know, that's beautiful. You can you're free to
go. So, Imam Shazri, he went back to
his students and his students said, we heard
a rumor. Did did you say that the
Quran
was created?
And he said, no. All I did was
point to my fingers
and say, all of these are created. My
fingers.
I just mentioned the 4 books and I
pointed to my fingers and he let me
go.
So Weltazilites also, they so for the Weltazilites,
remember we talked about the semireats, super rational
transmission.
This the Motesilites,
they denied the semireats.
They believe in theology, through the Nabuwad, prophetology,
but they said the sun riyat, they're not
super irrational. They're irrational. We're not gonna believe
in them. There's no punishment in the grave.
That's that's allegory. The prophet did not travel
in body from Mecca to Jerusalem. That's ridiculous.
There is no,
the physical bodies arise from the dead. It's
it's gone. It's it's completely it defaults. It's
all done. It's gone. But they believe in
the soul, they believe in the afterlife.
But some of these suprachinal transmissions, they did
not believe in.
They also rejected
divine attributes.
They saw this as imputing
plurality
upon the deity.
Right? So,
the Moqesilites,
would say, God doesn't have attributes.
He is,
he is omnipotent in his very essence, whereas
the Sunni position is that omnipotence
is an attribute that is in addition to
the essence,
but it's not attached nor detached from it.
So it's I mean, from our perspective, who
cares about this? But this was a major
issue during this time. So for example, what
test flights would say, this pen isn't blue.
Right? It's blue and it's very essence. Blue
is the pen, and
and and the pen is blue. There's no
difference between blue and pen. It all emanates
from the essence. Whereas the Sony position would
be, this is a pen, and it has
an attribute of being blue.
But outside of this essence, blue doesn't have
any meaning, which obviously is not true because
you have blue sky or blue cars, you
have blue hats, and so on and so
forth. But obviously,
every every analogy I give will be will
fall short because we're talking about these issues
that are very hard to conceptualize.
But apparently, this was an extremely big deal
at the time. Does God have attributes? Does
God not have attributes?
So the Metasulite said, God does not have
attributes.
They also believe that man creates his own
actions.
Right? In other words, man man creates evil.
So the the Sunni orthodoxy will look at
this and say, how can you say that
God didn't create something?
How can man create something? There's only one
creator, and they would charge them for being
polytheistic
by saying that. Mhmm.
Motesiaulites also believed that works give salvation.
Works give salvation. It's a misnomer even today
if you're familiar with like,
in polemical writings against Islam,
by like Christian apologists and polemicists. They'll say
Muslims believe for example, that if you're 51%
good and 49% evil, you go to heaven.
If you're 51% evil and 49% bad, then
you go to *. So your deeds are
way it's because the Quran talks about scales
and things like that, but the orthodox position
has always been, the sun the proto sunni
position has always been that a person is
safe only by the grace of God, not
by their
deeds. Although the deeds, are a byproduct of
faith in God.
So this is just quick descriptions.
So this was during the formative years, the
clarification process. And now we move into codification.
Okay?
So the Proto Sunni fathers
from the late 1st century,
to the early 3rd century. Okay. So now
actually we're back here in the clarification.
They're working under the framework of Sunni orthodoxy.
So some of these scholars, Abu Hanifa, for
example,
Malik ibn Anas, Abu Mohammed ibn Iqiz,
These proto orthodox,
Muslim scholars.
And
of course, the we saw these are the
equivalent
of, for example, Justin Martyr, Eusebius,
Irenaeus in the Christian tradition.
So by the late 3rd century, early 4th
century, much like again we saw in the
Christian tradition, we have the great codifiers of
creed.
And 3 men
stand above the rest, and they're on the
handout here.
The first one, Abu Mansur al Naturidi,
who died in 944
of
the Common Era.
He's from the Samad Khan. He was a
Persian.
Abu Hasan al Ashaid,
who was, from Iraq, 936
of the common era.
So these 2 men worked independently,
yet they came to very similar
conclusions. They differ in minor areas
that are considered to be negligible.
So the definition, the traditional definition of a
Sunni Muslim is a Muslim who adheres
to the theological school of either or
Ashari,
or both.
And some say there's a third school, the
school, or the Salafi school as well. But
definitely, the school of these two men is
considered to be Sunni orthodoxy.
So what are some of the differences between
the two? For example,
Imam Ash'ari said that it's conceivable for a
woman to be a prophet,
and there's an opinion amongst the Ash'aris that
Mary, the mother of Jesus was a prophetess,
or that Asiya, the wife of the pharaoh
was a prophetess.
The matrimedi say this is only an office
or a function of men, That's one of
the differences.
Another difference,
this actually is a big difference,
I think,
is the Ashaddis,
say
that, the intellect must be aided by
revelation
in order to arrive at true theology.
Whereas a maturity position is the intellect is
sufficient
to know God.
Right? So, Imam Ashari said, there's 4 conditions
that make it incumbent upon someone to become
Muslim,
for example. And 3 of them, Imam Maturidi
agreed with. They are intellect, they are maturity,
and the third one is,
what's the third one? Intellect maturity,
sound senses,
they're not blind and deaf. They can be
either or, but not blind and deaf.
The 4th one, Imam al Shali said,
and it's unique in his opinion, is that
he said,
that a a correct prophetic summons
should have reached that person.
That if a correct prophetic summons, the correct
message of a prophet, whether it's prophet Moses
or Jesus, or Mohammed, or Abraham, or Noah,
and any prophet. If a person was not
reached by that message in a good form,
a correct form, not a corrupted form, if
it didn't reach that person, then they're not
responsible to believe in God
because the intellect is not enough to arrive
at true theology. Must be aided by revelation.
Right?
So I think that's actually a pretty major
difference.
Interestingly, Abu Hassan al Ashari was a Mu'thesilite
for over 30 years.
He was a Mu'thesilite scholar. He studied under
Abu Adi
the Motesilite master.
And then he became and then he left
that and joined the proto Sunni movement in
the 4th century, and eventually became one of
its great codifieds.
The 3rd scholar here, Abu Jafa at Tahawi,
he was from Egypt.
I have a copy of his creed called
at Tahawiya,
and I want to actually quote from the
creed to demonstrate to you the polemical nature,
the responsive nature, reactionary nature of creedal statements.
So what are these 3 men do? They
refined and systematize
the beliefs of their predecessors.
Okay?
So the creed of Imam Abu Dhabi is
the simplest and the most popular
creed. It's only a 130 statements.
Rowan Williams,
who was the Archbishop of Canterbury,
he read the creed and he liked it,
and he encourages his diocese. In fact, all
Christians, all Catholics and Protestants to read this
book, to get a good idea, an authentic
idea as to what Muslims actually believe in.
Right? Here it's from a poor orthodox Muslim
scholar from the formative years of Islam, and
not from,
you know, some pundit or something like that.
So he said, read this book. So
we're gonna look at a few of these
statements and we'll end with this,
god willing,
just to demonstrate to you the nature of
creative literature. Remember we said from the outset,
the nature of creative literature is that it's
responsive. So he he says here in statement
74, he
says,
says, we do not dissent
from the majority of Muslims.
Right? And claiming the majority legitimizes
his creed because there's a hadith of the
prophet, which is considered to be a sound
hadith in which he said, Oh,
that the the
the literally hand of God or the the
protective
power of God
is with the majority.
Right? So this is this statement is aimed
or directed against heterodox
denominations. Statement number 56,
he says here,
So he says those saved are ultimately saved
by God's decision or grace, and those damned
are ultimately damned by God's decision. So this
is a polemic against who? The Marteselite,
the rationalist who said a person's deeds give
them salvation
or give them eternal damnation.
Another example,
statement 107 in the creed.
Oh, this is a it's a good one.
That human actions are God's creations, but humanity's
acquisitions.
So this is the Sunni way of dealing
with theodicy,
the problem of evil, that God created evil.
He created everything. He created evil actions, but
since man has limited free will, he will
take the consequences of those actions because of
a limited free will. So this goes against
the Mortezevites.
It's a polemic against them because Mortezilites said
man creates their own actions. It's against the
determinist,
right, who said man has no volition and
against the, dualist as well. So man has
absolute volition.
Right? Human actions are created by God, even
evil actions. God created everything. God is the
only creator. But since man has a limited
free will,
that he takes the consequences of those actions.
Couple more here are interesting.
Al Emmanuel so this is number, 80.
Statement 80 out of 130.
I'm sorry.
Statement number 79, actually. The believer does not
lose his or her faith except by denying
that which made him or her a believer.
So this is a calamity against the Khawarij.
Right? The seceders who said what? That if
a Muslim commits a mortal sin, whether small
or large, if a Muslim lies to someone
or cheats someone, they've left Islam, they will
apostate it. So here he's saying that unless
a Muslim denies that which made him or
her a Muslim, right, then they're still a
Muslim. In other words, if they if they
deny a an essential article of faith, then
they leave the faith. Not because they did
some
sin. The Muslim position is everyone commits the
sin
commit sins.
Couple more here. 1 number 118
and 119.
We love the companions of God's messenger, and
we do not have extreme love for any
of them.
And we assert the caliphate after the passing
of the messenger went to Abu Bakr as
Asadik. So this is a polemic against Shia,
who were saying that certain companions of the
prophet usurped his that Hadith caliphate.
So he works this into a creed
as well.
Number 35,
almost done here.
Yeah. I have a little time.
It's interesting. In in the Quran
that the Quran
is the word of God.
Emanated from God without modality
and it's it's in it's expression. There's no
modality.
There's no how. It's beyond comprehension.
It is unlike human speech
which is, it is unlike human speech which
is created.
Whoever hears and says, this is like human
speech, has disbelieved.
So this is a polemic against again, the
Mu'tazilites
who said the Quran was created not uncreated.
The Sunni position is that the Quran reflects
pre eternal meanings.
It's an attribute of God, therefore, it's uncreated.
The last one here,
Whoever describes God as having human characteristics
as disbelief, and obviously this is a polemic
directed against the Mujessima
or the anthropomorphous,
or very literal in their interpretation
of verses on the Quran.
So the conclusion is
Islamic creed did not fall out of the
sky.
It was the product
of 3 centuries of rigorous scholarship in the
face of other religious traditions,
heterodox
understandings,
as well as socio political
factors. Therefore, credo literature tends to be responsive
and polemical
in nature.
So that's the end of my spiel, to
use a Yiddish word.
If there's any questions or comments,
I'll try to entertain them.
If not,
thank you for coming. I appreciate the opportunity.
Yes,
sir.
So you mentioned that Imam Abu Mansur and
Imam Abu Hassan,
fall under the majority of the Sunnis. Yeah.
What exactly is he? Because Yes. What did
you say?
Imam Attaawi,
he was a contemporary of Ashadi,
and Naturdidi.
So his creedal articulation,
is considered to be
valid by both the Asharis and the Naturdidis.
Okay. So,
he didn't have a,
his students did not codify his opinions. It
just happened like that. That this that the
students of Ashadi and Machu Didi, they codify
their teachers opinions because they're probably more popular
than at Tahereh. But
as time went on, the creed of Aptahawy
became the most popular creedal treatise
even more than the the the the creed
of Asharia and Mataridi. That's why I'm quoting
from the creed of Imam Mata Hawi.
But he himself,
his
his juristic
identity was Hanafi,
and he's considered to be,
Machuidi.
He's more leaning towards Machuidi
than his Akita,
based on his statements.
But he's basically
summarizing
the opinions
of Ashari and
but his opinions weren't codified like the other
2 men were. There could have been a
third school of theology known as the Tahawiak
or something, it just wasn't codified.
But it's as simple as creed. It's only,
like I said, only a 130 statements.
It's pretty easy to follow.
So this is this is the book that
I recommend to,
non Muslims who want even Muslims who want
to know what do the Orthodox say about
Islamic creed or Islamic belief.
And difference of opinion is something that is
been in this religious community in Islam since
the very beginning.
Imam Ash Ali, he wanted to write a
book on the differences,
the juristic differences amongst the 4 scholars.
Just a book on the differences within the
Sunni orthodoxy, and it turned out to be
a 130 volumes along, just on the differences
within Sunni orthodoxy.
So there's a lot of it's certainly not
a monolithic,
tradition. There's a lot of diversity even today.
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they're very very diverse.
Any
comments or questions? I'm gonna I'm gonna bore
anyone.
Obviously, this is ongoing very fast.
Yes. Yes. Yes, sir. I think,
I'm trying to read my notes here. Okay.
He said there was about a 1,000 statements
are hadith, like about 3,000,000 that are considered
critical.
Is that is that common to
the Shia as well? Or is that just
specific to Sunni? Good question. So there's Yeah.
There's millions of hadith. 1,000
or so are considered to be multiply attested.
Those are Those 1,000 hadith
scholars of Sunni orthodoxy
have derived creedal statements and legislation.
The Shia have different books of hadith. They
don't accept
the vast majority of the hadith of the
Sunnis,
and the reasoning behind it is that they
believe the narrators of those hadith are unreliable.
For example,
out of the 6 companions of the prophet
to narrate over a 1000 hadith,
one of them was Aisha, the prophet's wife,
and the Shia have very unfavorable opinion about
her.
And Abu Hebreira also, he's a companion of
the prophet, a very unfavorable opinion of him
as well for various reasons.
So the vast majority they don't accept.
They would accept hadith related for example by
Adi, which are only about a there's only
a 142
of them.
Only 142 hadith related by the Caleb Hadith.
So those they would tentatively accept, but they
have their own hadith collections.
Shia creed,
is it's at times significant significantly different than
than Sunni creed.
But most Sunnis would say that,
even with that said, they're still considered to
be within the fold of Islam.
There are some conservative
Hanafis, for example, that would say that they're
they're they're they're not Muslim, but that's a
very much minority opinion
from
a
credal
standpoint.