Ali Ataie – The Promulation & Subsequent Codification of Orthodox Islamic Creed (Aqeedah)
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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,
from pistis,
I believe. Things I have faith in. So
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 bukdad, you'll find in the
Quran, for example,
the prayer of Moses of the burning bush,
he prays 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 and
just as a side note, this word, apidah,
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
Haqidah,
the Haqidah, the binding or the bounding
of Isaac.
So Haqidah 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 iyat,
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, and we'll talk
about what that means. So their definition of
doubt 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 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 is why do Muslims study creed?
It's actually,
an obligatory
field of study for every Muslim to have
some knowledge
of creed because it acts as a protection
against deviant beliefs. 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 Mahatma, before there's love of God, there
must be gnosis of God, there must be
Ma'rifah to Allah. 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?
Here, 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 nubuwat.
So this deals with the nature and function
of prophets.
The conceivability
for profits, the inconceivability
for profits. Now there are certain Muslims known
as, the We'll talk about who the 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 Muhammad
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 of
little consequence, because either way the prophet is
still creation, and this is the whole point.
That there's nothing uncreated, it's a 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
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 a1000 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 the day of judgment.
Right? These are things that are only known
through revelation.
Can't prove these things empirically. Alright. Can't prove
very much empirically. But since they're mentioned in
revelation, and they're ultimately attested,
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 of 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 are
the forces, theological,
social, historical, and otherwise,
that motivated early formulaic
creole articulations
by the scholars of 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
Aqdul Sunnah 1 Jama'ah, which basically 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 Russian scripture, whatnot. He's an expert of,
in the field of, potential criticism in the
New Testament. He he coined
a term which I'm going to use, I
think it's a brilliant term, called proto orthodox.
Proto orthodox
or 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.
Heteros 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.
Salud will utilize this term proto orthodoxy,
which will be used interchangeably
with proto
Sunni. So proto Sunni
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, and it'll help us
conceptualize.
So there's a 3 step,
there's 3 steps in in creedal 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 the 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 Gnostics, and the docetate.
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 proto 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 Christian era,
the great codifiers like Athanasius of Alexandria,
and the Greek
East, Augustine of Hippo in the Latin West,
Cappadocian church fathers in Asia Minor, the 2
great Greeks in Basil.
What did they do? They refined
and systematized
the beliefs of their of their 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 Aphanacian 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 Kerouma 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
They didn't engage in kadam.
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, this is a stone conundrum. Right?
Can he create a stone that's too heavy
for him to lift? Can God
what was the one? Can he can he
warm up a burrito so hot that he
can't eat it? Or they 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's 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 with 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 Atasid 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
reasoned responses
and clarifications
from these proto Sunni scholars.
It was necessary. Again, credo language
is by its nature responsive.
It refutes heresies.
It clarifies
positions.
Right? So the classic example,
is
the logos
of the Yohannan 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
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 N Maryam,
Jesus the son of Mary.
So
these, Hellenized Christian philosophers would ask the Muslims,
is this the last gospel, the Johannine gospel?
Right? John 1:1,
where it says what? NRK in 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
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
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
reasoned 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
creedal articulations.
How did these groups influence creedal 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 Bedouins 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 believe that if a Muslim committed
a mortal sin, then they had 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 as I
believe, you're not even a Muslim. This type
of very exclusive, this type of beliefs.
They would anathematize,
companions of the prophet who did not believe
as they believe. In other words, they make
tough fear of them. Anemhetize means they would
declare them as being apostates and they 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. The man's name
was Abdul Rahman ibn mumjam al Murad I
Istaf, the caliph Ali as he was leaving
the mosque.
So that's the first group, the Khoarij. 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 kavahir,
you forfeited the rights of community, you've apostated,
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,
Shia believed that Ali was ordained by God
to The Shia believe that Ali 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 Mujessima,
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
Ainu Law, which can be translated the eye
of God, or Yath O Law, which can
be translated
the hand of God, or the Sa'ath, 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
he has a compartmentalized
body for example.
He dwells within his creation. So this idea
of substance, right?
Ajram 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 mujasimah.
And God is not made of substance.
The Quran says,
and 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 determinists,
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?
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 have 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 be Proto Sunni
or Proto Orthodox
were the rationalists,
the the
rationalists.
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 Muertesilite
caliphs,
believed that the Quran was created. This was
a major issue
back during this time. Is the Quran created?
Is it uncreated?
So the multashalite position is the Quran is
created. The Sunni position is that it's uncreated.
So any scholar that that espouse that the
Quran or taught his flock, that the Quran
was
was
uncreated, was sometimes tortured, persecuted, sometimes killed.
Once a scholar Ahmed ibn Muhammad,
who is a scholar who had his own,
codified school of jurisprudence,
he had reached a level of complete juristic
and methodological independence known as Ijdihad 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, and 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 Shavar, 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, they let me go.
So Motesilites also, they so for the Motesilites,
remember we talked about the semireyah, supra rational
transmission.
This the Motesilite,
they denied the semireyah.
They believe in theology, they believe in Nabuwath,
prophetology,
but they said the semireat,
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 and
it's gone. But they believe in the soul,
they believe in the afterlife.
But some of these super rational transmission, 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 materialites 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.
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, 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 the proto like 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 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 al Ritlis
Asha Affairid,
These proto orthodox, Muslim
scholars.
And, of course, the we saw these are
the equivalent of, for example, Justin Martyr, Eusebius,
Irenaeus, and 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 Sam Afghan, he was a
Persian.
Abu Hasan al Ash'aib,
who was, from Iraq, 936
of the Common Era.
So these two 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 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 Matrulidi
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 Ashari 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 a 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 Muertesilite
for over 30 years.
He's a Muertesilite scholar. He studied under Abu
Adi al Jabari,
the Muertesilite 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 protopliers.
The third 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 did these 3 men do? They
refined and systematize
the beliefs of their predecessors.
Okay?
So the creed of Imamat Sahawi 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? Hear it 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 says 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 creedal literature is that it's
responsive.
So he he says here in statement 74,
he says,
He 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 Adal Jema'ati.
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 So
this is a polemic against who? The Marteselites,
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 is 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 Mortezilites.
It's a polemic against them because the 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, interesting.
Al Emmanuel, so this is number 80,
state in 80 at 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 polemic against the Khwaredesh.
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 a
sin
commits 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
Sadiq. So this is a polemic against Shia,
who were saying that certain companions of the
prophet usurped his the alice 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
in its in its 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 Mujessiman
or the anthropomorphists
were 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 sociopolitical
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.
Imam Abu Jahfa Tawawi, what exactly is he?
Because Yes. What do you say?
Imam Al Tawawi, he was a contemporary of
Ashadi,
and Naturidi.
So his creal articulation,
is considered to be
valid by both the Ashadis and the Naturidis.
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 and
they codify their teachers opinions because they're probably
more popular than at Tahereh. But
as time went on, the creed of Abtahawi
became the most popular creedal treatise
even more than the the the the creed
of Asharia and Matrimidi. That's why I'm quoting
from the creed of Imam Mato Hawi,
but he himself,
his
his juristic
identity was Hanafi,
and he's considered to be,
Matuidi.
He's more leaning towards Matuidi
than his Aqida,
based on his statements.
But he's basically
summarizing
the opinions of
Acherie and Machuidi,
but his opinions weren't codified like the other
2 men were. There could have been a
third school of theology known as the Tahawiad
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 has
been in this religious community in the swamps
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 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 I'm going very fast.
Yes. Yes. Yes, sir. I think,
I'm trying to read my notes here. Okay.
You said there's about a 1,000 statements are
hadith, like, about 3,000,000 that are considered credal.
Is that is that common to
the Shia as well or is that just
specific to the 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 Ali,
which are only about a there's only a
142
of them.
Only 142 hadith related by the Caliphani.
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.