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ON THE BOUNDARIES OF
THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE
IN ISLAM
 Studies in Islamic Philosophy

General Editor

S. NOMANUL HAQ, University of Pennsylvania

Editorial Advisory Board

MICHAEL COOK, Princeton University

EVERETT ROWSON, University of Pennsylvania
ROBERT WISNOVSKY, Harvard University
 Studies in Islamic Philosophy
General Editor: S. Nomanul Haq
VOLUME I

ON THE BOUNDARIES OF
THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE
IN ISLAM

ABU HAMID AL-GHAZALI’S

Faysal al-Tafriqa
Bayna al-Islam wa al-Zandaqa

SHERMAN A. JACKSON

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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 CONTENTS

page
Foreword by the General Editor
Preface x1
Acknowledgements XV

Introduction: Part One

A. Theology Between Tolerance and Exclusivity
B. Theology Between Religion and History
C. Theology Between Traditionalism and Rationalism 16
D. Theology Between Orthodoxy and Heresy 29

Introduction: Part Two

A. Al-Ghazali: Relevant Aspects of his Life and Times 35
1. The Jhya’ and the Culture of the ‘Ulama’ 36.
2. ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi 41
Faysal al-Tafriga 43
1. The Extremists 44
2. The Crypto-Infidels BS)
3. The Limits of Reason: The Critique of Kalam 59
4. The Limits of Experience and the
Boundlessness of God’s Mercy 64
Conclusion 66
. A Note on the Translation 68
viii CONTENTS

ANNOTATED TRANSLATION OF
FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA BAYNA AL-ISLAM WA AL-ZANDAQA

SECTION I 85
SECTION II 87
SECTION III 88
SECTION IV 92
SECTION V 93
SECTION VI 96
SECTION VII 101
SECTION VIII 104
SECTION IX 107
SECTION X 112
SECTION XI 116
SECTION XII 120
SECTION XIII 124
SECTION XIV 130
SECTION XV 131

Bibliography 143
Index 1S!
 FOREWORD

It was some two years ago that the Oxford University Press,
Pakistan, took the initiative of arousing my interest in the
possibility of launching a series in Islamic philosophy; I seized
the opportunity immediately, and the idea was given a formal
character soon thereafter. To my delight, three of my respected
friends and scholarly colleagues agreed to serve on an Editorial
Advisory Board—Professors Michael Cook of Princeton, Everett
Rowson of the University of Pennsylvania, and Robert
Wisnovsky of Harvard. And so the process began.
The principle governing this series is the availability of
reliable studies in that historical phenomenon we call Islamic or
Arabic philosophy—the question of the appellation here being
more than nominal. These studies are conceived with a general
educated audience in view, in addition to but not excluding
experts.
So here we have the first volume in the series. I am
particularly pleased that it begins with that formidable thinker
al-Ghazali, who was called ‘the most original mind among
Arabian philosophers’ by the nineteenth-century European
philologist Ernest Renan, and whose influence is so enduring in
the Islamic world that, one can legitimately say, much of this
world still lives in a Ghazalian twilight. Indeed, classifying
al-Ghazali has always exercised historians—is he at all a
philosopher in the Hellenized sense of being a faylasuf? Or is
he a sufi? Or is he a theologian? Or is he all of this at once, or
none of this at all? These questions are complex and do not lend
themselves to neat answers. But one thing is clear: al-Ghazali
cannot be excluded from an account of Islamic philosophy
proper. Beginning the series with him, then, is in many ways a
particularly apt beginning.
xX FOREWORD

This work by Professor Sherman Jackson has Ghazali’s

Faysal al-Tafriga'at its core—it contains an annotated translation
of the text, preceded by an extensive introductory section in
which the author reconstructs the historical and theoretical
context of the Faysal and, in a most animated style, discusses
its relevance for contemporary religious thought and practice.
A large body of primary sources support this endeavour
throughout. The reader is likely to note that Professor Jackson’s
concerns in this work are both scholarly and existential.
It goes without saying that everybody will enthusiastically
welcome the availability of a newer and crisper English
translation of an important Ghazalian text, a highly readable
translation with very useful annotations. But Professor Jackson’s
Introduction too is not without great interest: it embodies his
powerful thesis that there is no getting away from the
contingencies of history; that we all construct our world; that
the world is not given to us as such. The implications of this
thesis are far-reaching indeed.
Before closing, I must express my grateful thanks to Ameena
Saiyid of Oxford University Press, Pakistan, for her kindness
and her outstanding vision and leadership. I remain profoundly
indebted to my colleagues on the Editorial Advisory Board.
I am exceedingly happy to introduce to the reader this first
volume in the Studies in Islamic Philosophy series.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania S. Nomanul Haq

February 2001 University of Pennsylvania
o
 PREFACE

Many years ago, while still a graduate student at the University

of Pennsylvania, I read (when I probably should have been
reading assigned materials) a copy of ‘Faysal al-tafriga bayna
al-islam wa al-zandaqa’—The Decisive Criterion for
Distinguishing Islam from Masked Infidelity—by the renowned
jurist, mystic, philosopher, and theologian, Abi Hamid
al-Ghazali, arguably the most famous Muslim intellectual in the
history of Islam. True to its title, this work set out to provide a
legally-sanctioned definition of Unbelief (kur) as the basis for
a criterion for determining who, as far as theology is concerned,
is to be considered a Muslim and who is not. Its brevity
notwithstanding, I was immediately struck by the depth and
imaginative power of the work, particularly in the context of the
perduring conflict between Traditionalism and Rationalism in
pre-modern Islam. I could also see, however, its relevance to
the contemporary Muslim theological scene, given some of the
charges and counter-charges raging between revivalist groups
like the rationalist Ahbash and the traditionalist Salafiya. This
was also a time when Minister Louis Farrakhan was at the
height of his activity, a fact that periodically resurrected
discussions among African-American Muslims over whether or
not he, Elijah Muhammad, and the whole Nation of Islam should
be considered Muslims. In fact, even Elijah Muhammad’s son
and successor, Imam Warith Deen Muhammad, remained under
a cloud of suspicion following his courageous redirecting of the
NOI, into Sunni Islam. Meanwhile, there were other, less-known
figures, like Imam ‘Isa Muhammad (al-Sayyid ‘Isa al-Hadi
al-Mahdi, leader of the Ansar Allah Community)! whose exotic
claims and scriptural interpretations seemed to reflect more
conspicuously an ulterior agenda not totally in step with Islam.
Yet, depending on who was making the charge, it was not always
xii PREFACE

clear how his alleged heresy differed from that attributed to

Minister Farrakhan or Imam Warith Deen Muhammad or the
Ahbash or the Salafiya. For in many instances, the charges levied
against these groups lacked a clear and solid basis, reflected
a double standard, or were heavily tied to personalities,
weaknesses that were only obscured by the stridency with which
the charges themselves were cast. Read against this backdrop, it
became clear to me that al-Ghazali had gone well beyond his
immediate context and objectives and produced in Faysal
a classic work of enduring utility and relevance.
Several years later, after obtaining my Ph.D. and entering the
classroom, I was invited to team-teach a course at the University
of Michigan entitled, ‘African-American Religion Between
Christianity and Islam,’ with my now good friend and visiting
Presidential Scholar, Charles H. Long. It was during the course
of this endeavor that I encountered Black Theology, a movement
among African-American Christians that had mounted a critique
of traditional Christian theology, arguing that the latter was
neither universally valid nor enabling and that both the questions
it asked and the answers it proffered were meaningful to only
a limited segment of the Christian community. Moreover, Black
Theology argued, in its present state traditional Christian
theology perpetuated notions of white superiority and in so doing
served as an instrument of black domination. Given the
continued rise of Islam in the African-American community,
alongside the growing gaps and developing tensions between
immigrant and indigenous Muslims, I began to wonder about
the inevitability of a ‘Muslim Black Theology’—or, to extend
the analogy beyond the African-American community, a
‘Muslim American Theology,’ or a ‘Muslim Feminist Theology,’
or even a ‘Muslim Womanist Theology’—and how these might
relate to traditional Islamic theologies from the Muslim world,
particularly on the question of Belief versus Unbelief. Once
again, al-Ghazali’s Faysal sprang to mind.
Throughout this period, given what I took to be its obvious
importance, I assumed that Faysal had been the object of
numerous scholarly studies and that I would eventually
 PREFACE xiii

encounter these as I continued to read in Islamic law and

theology. To my surprise, I discovered that, while several
scholars had dealt with aspects of Faysal in the course of treating
other authors or issues, there had been no studies devoted
specifically to Faysal itself. Moreover, almost all of those
chapters and sections of books and articles that did treat of the
work seemed to miss al-Ghazali’s deep ecumenical concerns,
which seemed so prominent and obvious to me. In 1980,
R.J. McCarthy published a study and translation of al-Ghazali’s
‘autobiography,’ ‘al-Munqidh min al-dalal’ (under the title
Freedom and Fulfillment’), to which he attached a quick
translation of Faysal. Father McCarthy’s interest appears,
however, not to have gone beyond providing his reader with
additional insight into the breadth and style of al-Ghazali’s
thought. It was not his intention to produce a reliable scholarly
translation of Faysal.
In light of this continued marginality sustained by Faysal,
I decided a few years ago to produce a scholarly translation of
the work. As I proceeded in my off hours to reread and translate
the text, however, it quickly dawned on me that my
understanding of its basic message, along with many of the
broader issues it touched upon in the history of Muslim theology,
was at variance with much of what had been written by
specialists in the field. I decided, thus, to lay out my views on
these issues in order to be able to place the work in what
I believed to be its proper ideational context. Given, however,
the difficulties students and non-specialists routinely encounter
with theological works, I wanted to offer a concise, reader-
friendly introduction that would highlight al-Ghazali and Faysal
and provide some insight into the key issues involved in Muslim
theological discourse. To this end, I tried to be brief and to go
directly to whatever point was under consideration. I tried as
well to resist being drawn into broader debates and controversies
not directly related to my aim of contextualizing al-Ghazali and
Faysal. My efforts in this regard appear in Part One of the
Introduction. In Part Two of the Introduction, I offer a brief
analysis of the contents of Faysal. Here too, I tried to limit my
xiv PREFACE

comments to what I felt was necessary to a faithful depiction of

Faysal and the explication of its main arguments.
My primary aim in undertaking this project was to produce
an accurate translation of Faysal. At the same time, given the
growing interest in Islam on the part of students and scholars
outside the fields of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, my
broader objective was to make al-Ghazali’s work accessible to a
wider audience. To this end, al-Ghazali’s lofty style and the
highly technical nature of his subject notwithstanding, I tried to
convey the content of Faysal via the simplest English possible.
To make up for inevitable failures in this regard, I added notes
to explain difficult points not treated in the Introduction. Other
technical aspects of the translation are discussed in Section D of
Part Two of the Introduction.
Faysal, in my view, is one of the most thoughtful and
illuminating theological essays in the history of Islam. I am
confident that this will quickly impress itself upon the reader, as
will Faysal’s relevance to the present and future of Muslim
theological discourse, East and West. Given the expansion of
Islam outside its traditional geographical boundaries, the
question of the boundaries of Muslim theological tolerance is
even more pressing today than it was when al-Ghazali first
penned Faysal almost a millenium ago. In translating and
analysing Faysal, I can only hope that I have succeeded in
conveying something of the courage, humanity, and brilliance
that al-Ghazali demonstrates throughout this work, and that he
would recognize his voice, his mind, and his broader concerns
and interests in what I have produced in his name.

NOTES

1. See, A.B. McCloud, African American Islam (New York: Routledge,

1995), 61-3. McCloud’s work has brief introductions to all the African-
American groups cited.
2. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980). A new edition of McCarthy’s work
has been recently issued by Fons Vitae Press under the title, Al-Ghazali:
Deliverance From Error.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has benefited from the kind and judicious remarks
and criticisms of several scholars who were selfless enough to
read one or another version of the manuscript on its way to final
completion. I would like to thank in this regard Mohammad
Fadel, Muneer Fareed, Alexander Knysh, Aminah B. McCloud,
Ebrahim Moosa, Bernard Weiss, and John L. Esposito. I would
also like to thank the students who participated in the American
Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM) programme during the
summer of 1999 for their valuable reactions to and comments
on an initial draft of the translation. I would like to thank the
members of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Studies in
Islamic Philosophy series of Oxford University Press, Everett
Rowsen, Michael Cook, and Robert Wisnovsky. Very special
thanks are due to the General Editor of the series, Syed Nomanul
Haq, for the keen interest he expressed in my work and for the
careful attention he paid to a number of technical requirements
involved in its publication. Finally, I would like to express my
deepest and most heartfelt appreciation to my family, especially
my wife Heather, for their undying love, their constant support
and their continued confidence in me, and for simply putting up
with me throughout the life of this project.
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Introduction

Part One

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A. THEOLOGY: BETWEEN TOLERANCE AND
EXCLUSIVITY

Theology, literally /ogos (reasoning, discourse) on theos (God or

divinity), is the activity of reflecting upon or thinking
systematically about God, i.e., His nature, His attributes, and
His relations with humanity and the universe.’ In the broadest
sense, theology may be considered a branch of philosophy,”
and in this capacity need not be associated with any religion or
revelation. In its more common, restricted sense, however,
theology refers to the efforts of the adherents of revealed religion
to understand and explicate what scripture says about God and
the Unseen. The result of this effort is invariably a set of
doctrines or dogmas which, taken together, are also referred to
as ‘theology’ and, in their distilled form, constitute religious
creeds, or what Muslims commonly refer to as ‘aqida.”?
Typically, one or another creed will succeed in gaining the assent
of those who are vested with or assume the right to define
theological orthodoxy (from the Greek, orthos, straight, correct,
and doxa, opinion, doctrine). When this occurs, all other
theological doctrines are judged as heresy, and those who profess
these irregular views are branded heretics.* Heresy, however, in
the context of classical Islam, was not in every instance.
synonymous with infidelity or apostasy. Indeed, in its best
tradition, Islam, like Roman Catholicism, recognized, mutatis
mutandis, the distinction between formal heresy, i.e., the wilful
persistence in error, and material heresy, or the holding of
heretical doctrines through no fault of one’s own.’ Heresy, in
other words, could connote not one but several categories of
theological deviance, from outright Unbelief (kufr) to
unsanctioned (though non-damning) innovation (bid ‘a) to honest
4 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

mistakes and misunderstandings. Whether a doctrine would be

relegated to one or another of these categories would depend on
how broad or narrow the criterion for determining orthodoxy
was and how objectively it was applied. A narrower criterion
would make it easier to increase the number of doctrines branded
as heresy; a broader, more nuanced one would result in both
fewer heresies and in fewer of these being placed outside the
pale of the Faith. Worst of all would be those politically,
ideologically, or personally motivated criteria whose ill-defined
and ever-changing boundaries exposed the very concept of
orthodoxy to becoming synonymous with terror. For on such
criteria, the boundaries of theological tolerance would extend
only as far as political, ideological, or personal expediency
dictated.
On the other hand, modern liberal sensibilities
notwithstanding, theological tolerance, or the ability to
accommodate multiple theological interpretations, is neither the
main nor the only concern of theology or orthodoxy. Nor are
those who succeed in establishing their theology as orthodox
alone in passing harsh judgments (or even calling for sanctions)
against their co-religionists. Heretics are often just as strident in
their judgements, just as swift in calling for sanctions against
their adversaries, and even more convinced of the superiority of
their own theological views.’ This endemic tendency toward
judgement and reprobation underscores what theologians
typically perceive to be one of the most important objectives of
theology as a whole, namely, to protect the Faith from what are
perceived to be dangerous and destructive ideas and
interpretations that threaten to distort the true meaning of
revelation, undermine its religious efficacy, and destroy its
appeal to hearts and minds beyond the existing circle of
believers. From this perspective, a major function of theology
resides in its use as a category of exclusion, i.e., as a delineator
between true and false claimants to the Faith. In this capacity,
its impulse is decidedly in the direction of narrower rather than
broader criteria for orthodoxy; for the broader the criterion, the
more susceptible the community will be to the influences of
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 5

those whose true sentiments are out of step with revelation.

And, given the choice between affording heretics greater
accommodation and protecting the community from the
perceived threat of interpretive viruses, theological traditions
will naturally incline toward the latter.
The present book is a study and translation of a criterion for
determining theological orthodoxy in Islam devised by one of
the most celebrated theologians in Muslim history, Hujjat
al-Islam (Proof of Islam) Abi Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111).
This work, entitled Faysal al-tafriga bayna al-islam wa
al-zandagqa (The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam
from Masked Infidelity) is perhaps the first and by far the most
thoughtful and systematic of its type in the history of Islam.
Written during the last five to six years of al-Ghazali’s life, it
reflects the concerns and frustrations of a man deeply troubled
by the debilitating effects of both theological intolerance and
theological laissez-faire. While theological intolerance sapped
the community’s ability to accommodate plausible theological
differences, theological laissez-faire confused tolerance with
indifference and exposed the community to the machinations of
those whose conflation of rationalistic deism with Islam only
masked their opposition to the religion of Muhammad.?
While I have characterized Faysal as an effort to establish
theological orthodoxy, it should be noted that it is decidedly not
al-Ghazali’s aim to confer this status exclusively upon any
particular theology or theological school. Rather, al-Ghazali’s
mission is to define the boundaries within which competing
theologies can coexist in mutual recognition of each other, i.e.,
as ‘orthodox,’ in the sense of passing theological muster.
Al-Ghazali’s aim, in other words, is not to establish who among
the theological schools is ‘right’, but rather to demonstrate the
folly and unfairness of the practice of condemning a doctrine as
heresy simply because it goes against one’s own theology.
Furthermore, he insists, even where a doctrine can be justifiably
deemed ‘wrong’ or heretical, this does not necessarily constitute
Unbelief.
6 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

At bottom, al-Ghazali’s argument against the theological

extremists—among whom are both Traditionalists and
Rationalists—is that they fail (or refuse) to recognize that their
doctrines are grounded in interpretive presuppositions that are
historically determined. This failure on their part results in an
effective obliteration of the distinction between interpretation
and revelation. In effect, theological extremists regard their
doctrines as being unmediated through fallible and unavoidably
secular processes of human thought. As such, their doctrines are
sublated into the transcendental realm of revelation. On this
conflation there is virtually no distinction between a primary
and a secondary belief. Rather, the theological extremists hold
that to go against any of their doctrines is to go against revelation
itself, whence the ubiquitous charge of Unbelief hurled against:
their adversaries.
Against this tendency, al-Ghazali insists that the only
theological doctrines whose violation may serve as a basis for
charging a person with Unbelief are 1) fundamentals (usiJ), i.e.,
belief in God, the prophethood of Muhammad, and the Hereafter;
and 2) secondary doctrines that are backed by unanimous
consensus (ijma‘) or handed down on the authority of the
Prophet via diffuse congruence (tawatur’). At bottom, these were
doctrines that could be said in effect to be ‘transcendent,’
inasmuch as they enjoyed either universal recognition or
impeccable transmission, from which it could be inferred that
they were impervious to the historical specificities of any group
or individual. Even regarding these doctrines, however,
al-Ghazali would insist that the charge of Unbelief could be
sustained only against those who deemed the Prophet to have
perpetrated lies in teaching such beliefs. This stipulation, given
the extremists’ conflation of interpretation with revelation and
their consequent insistence that anyone who opposes their
doctrines effectively charges the Prophet with lying, would form
the focal point of Faysal and occupy the bulk of the work, as
al-Ghazali attempts to demonstrate that both literalness and
figurativeness are different but equally valid levels of truth
attributable to (Prophetic) statements and that different historical
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 7

endowments yield different interpretive presuppositions, which

in turn determine the degree of literal or figurative truth
attributed to a statement. In the end, al-Ghazali’s point is that,
depending on one’s interpretive presuppositions, both literal and
non-literal interpretations may be justified. As such, neither the
proponents of literal nor of non-literal interpretations should be
automatically accused of charging the Prophet with delivering
lies.
As for those whom al-Ghazali charges with theological
laissez-faire (to whom I refer hereafter as the Crypto-infidels),
these were the Neoplatonic ‘Muslim’ philosophers (al-falasifa),
who are actually the lesser of al-Ghazali’s concerns and are
used primarily to demonstrate the limits of theological tolerance
in Islam. While al-Ghazali is disappointingly brief in his
treatment of the actual doctrines of the Crypto-infidels, his
adjudging them Unbelievers, despite his admission that some of
them believe in God, is exceedingly important for what it reveals
about the restrictive manner in which he defines kufr and its use
as a category of exclusion. Kufr, according to al-Ghaziali, is
purely a matter of rejecting the truthfulness of the Prophet
Muhammad. Beyond this, it reveals, in and of itself, virtually
nothing about a person’s moral or religious constitution.!° On
this understanding, the modern Muslim tendency to employ
‘kafir (Unbeliever)’ as a moral, ethnic, cultural, or even
civilizational delineator shows itself to be a patent misuse of the
category. At the same time, and precisely for this reason, the
counter-effort to effectively banish the term ‘kafir’ from the
Muslim lexicon can be seen to be a superfluous distortion. For
on al-Ghazali’s definition, a kafir (qua kafir) is neither immoral,
irreligious, nor exempt from receiving recognition—in this
world—for the good he or she commits. As such, it is wholly
unnecessary to deny that a person is a kafir simply in order to
be able to preserve his or her status as a human being possessed
of religion or other laudable qualities.!!
I shall discuss in greater detail both al-Ghazali and Faysal in
the more immediate contexts of 5th/11th-century Baghdad and
Nishapur in Part Two of this introduction. As a preliminary to
8 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

that discussion, I should first like to set up the broader

conceptual framework within which al-Ghazali’s perception and
manner of proceeding are to be understood. The main contours
of this framework evolve out of a closer examination of the
relationship between theology and history in Islam. This will
entail a closer look at the meaning and application of such key
constructs as theology, religion, rationalism, traditionalism,
orthodoxy, and heresy. This will aid us in following al-Ghazali’s
arguments and in measuring more fully the illocutionary force
behind his words. It will also alert the reader to the assumptions
and presuppositions that underlie my understanding of Faysal
and inform my translation of the text.

B. THEOLOGY BETWEEN RELIGION AND HISTORY

The celebrated Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher once observed,

‘Prophets are not theologians.’!* This statement rings especially
true in the context of Islam for, on the Qur’anic depiction, the
very claim to prophethood is inextricably bound to the assertion
that the claimant’s pronouncements are emphatically not the
result of any ‘thinking’ or ‘reflection’ on his part.'? This alone
might be enough to convince some that theology per se is an
alien enterprise grafted, in bad faith, onto the face of Islam. But
the matter is not so simple. For while the Prophet may not have
been a theologian, he was also not a jurist'* or a grammarian.
Yet law (figh), jurisprudence (usil al-figh), and Arabic grammar
are all universally recognized as legitimate (even essential)
Islamic pursuits. What Goldziher’s observation does suggest,
however, is that, unlike the data and instruction revealed to the
Prophet from beyond history, theology develops within the
context of human history, and largely for historical rather than
purely religious reasons. Indeed, in and of itself, religion both
can be and often is atheological or even anti-theological.'°
For, properly speaking, religion (i.e., in its original sense'®) is
purely a matter of sustaining a conscientious commitment to a
set of rituals and obligations. based on the recognition that one
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 9

is bound or indebted to a divine or supernatural power (or

powers) outside oneself.!’ Thus, the pre-Islamic Arabians
(and, some would argue, the first generations of Muslims) could
have religion with no corresponding theology. Similarly,
according to Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black or African-
American religion in the US, what he terms ‘The Fifth
Religion,’'* was a religion that failed to develop a theology."
By definition, religion cannot dispense with the idea of God
(or at least some ‘divine or supernatural power (or powers)
outside oneself’). As such, to have religion is to have belief in
and hence belief about God. But this is not the same as engaging
in theology. For theology entails a commitment to a particular
process via which beliefs about God are arrived at and sustained.
It is perfectly possible, on the other hand, to arrive at and sustain
beliefs about God independent of this process. This raises an
important point about the aforementioned term, ‘agida.*° For
‘aqida (from the Arabic verb ‘a-qa-da, to bind, to hold), denotes
only what one holds to be true, not the process via which one
arrives at or sustains that belief. The fact that one has an ‘aqida,
in other words, does not at all imply that one has engaged in the
activity of theology. One simply does not have to have theology
in order to have an ‘agida. Moreover, to the extent that one
accepts the proposition that revelation comes from beyond
history, one must also accept the possibility that ‘agida can be
transcendent. (Indeed, a Muslim would insist that the ‘agida of
the Prophet was transcendent.) Theology, on the other hand,
being grounded in human thought, can never be transcendent.
To say, however, that theology can never be transcendent is
not at all to say that it can never be right or that it can never
apprehend the truth. After all, one can arrive at the same
conclusions with theology as one arrives at without it. But
beyond the simple aim of arriving at the truth, part of the whole
point of theology is to be able to know and validate the fact that
one has arrived at the truth, which is why so many Muslim
theologians were traditionally hostile towards the practice of
theological taqlid, i.e., acceptance on faith. At bottom, however,
theology can only achieve this goal of knowing and validating
10 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

its arrival at truth through a continuous process of verification.

That is to say, the theologian achieves certainty only through
the experience of verifying his and his predecessor’s theological
conclusions. Yet the theologian is limited in this regard by the
fact that his experience, as a finite being, is itself limited. Indeed,
one can only imagine how significantly his verifications might
be enhanced by an additional hundred years of life. God, on the
other hand, as the Infinite (al-Awwal, al-Akhir), speaks from the
perspective of infinite ‘experience’ (perhaps the real significance
behind His attribute, a/l-Khabir). Thus, in contradistinction to
the informed speculations of the theologian, God’s statements
are effectively verified through an infinity of experience, beyond
which any additional verification becomes superfluous. As we
shall see, this distinction between theology and non-theological
apprehension of truth is basic to al-Ghazali’s outlook and is
expressed in a variety of ways and on a number of levels. In
fact, in his view, part of the whole problem of theological
intolerance begins with the theologians’ unwillingness
(or inability) to acknowledge the limits of their enterprise, as a
result of which they seek to impose through abstract formal
reasoning what can only be established through cumulative
verification, for which their approach is a poor and inadequate
substitute.”!
Returning to our original point, there is no essential or even
necessary relationship between theology and religion. The real
impetus behind theology emerges out of the concrete historical
experience of a community. In the case of Islam, history
informed the development of theology in at least three ways:
1) it provided the initial impetus; 2) it defined the issues; and
3) it bequeathed the method.”? These factors, to borrow the
expression of the late Fazlur Rahman, were both coeval and
consubstantial. The method used could not be separated from
the impetus that brought theological discourse into being, which
in turn could not be separated from the issues that defined that
discourse. In the present context, however, methodology
emerges as the primary concern, because even where competing
parties agreed on specific issues (e.g., beatific vision or the
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 11

createdness of the Qur’an) they remained divided and destined

to conflict on methodological grounds. Thus, questions of
theological tolerance inevitably came down to the possibility of
mutual recognition among competing methodologies. Such
recognition would remain long in the coming, however, as long
as the provenance of these competing methods remained
shrouded in a rhetoric of transcendence and theology was
presented as either an extension of revelation or a simple form
of scriptural exegesis (tafsir).”°
Two facts, however, both of which al-Ghazali recognizes,
suggest a way out of this conundrum. The first of these is that
theology and exegesis are two distinct enterprises. The essential
function of exegesis (from the Greek, ‘to bring out’) is to
explain the meaning of a text, much like a dictionary does in the
case of individual words. Theology, on the other hand, seeks to
justify or reconcile meaning on the basis of some pre-existing or
external criterion, in the process of which it is subject to falling
into eisegesis, i.e., reading meaning into a text. An example of
this distinction between theology and exegesis is reflected in
the early tafsir work by Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari
(d. 310/922). There, in treating Qur’an 89:22, ‘wa ja’a rabbuka
wa al-malaku saffan saffan...(and your Lord and the angels
come, line after line),’ al-Tabari explains the meaning of this
verse in simple dictionary fashion, limiting his additions to a
few details surrounding the occasion of God’s coming. He makes
no attempt to reconcile this with any preconceived criteria, such
as the avoidance of anthropomorphism or the duty to pass on
problematic verses without attempting to attribute any concrete
meaning to them (imraruha kama ja’at).** The same basic
approach is repeated in the case of the verb istawa, which was
at the centre of the controversy over God’s mounting the Throne
(istawa ‘ala al-‘arsh). Here, however, al-Tabari notes that there
was controversy, and after a brief digression aimed at
establishing the propriety of his simple explication, he stops
and says: ‘Were it not for my disdain for dragging this book out
to great lengths by filling it with matters that do not belong to
this genre, | would point out the falsity of every statement that
12 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

contradicts the view of the People of Truth.’ In other words,

according to al-Tabari, exegesis, or tafsir, is, strictly speaking, a
genre for explaining scripture, not for justifying or reconciling
it with any broader criteria.
On the other hand, anyone familiar with the theological
writings of contemporaries and near contemporaries of al-Tabari,
from Rationalists like al-Ash‘ari (d. 325/936)?’ and al- Maturidi
(d. 333/944) to Traditionalists like Ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855)”
and al-Darimi (d. 280/893),°° knows that these works typically
treated verses like these in ways that reconciled them with some
master theological principle. To take just one example, in his
‘al-Radd ‘ala al-zanadiga wa al-jahmiya,’ Imam Ahmad Ibn
Hanbal’s treatment of the verses on God’s mounting the Throne,
e.g., ‘al-rahman ‘ala al-‘arsh istawa,’ is grounded in his
opposition to the Jahmite position to the effect that God is in all
places and not limited to any particular station on or above the
Throne. His ‘explanation’ includes several proofs and analogies
via which he argues that God is not everywhere and that God’s
knowledge of all things does not necessitate His existing in all
places. Typical of his manner of proceeding is the following:

If you want to know that the Jahmite invents lies against God when
he claims that God is everywhere and that He is not in one place to
the exclusion of others, ask him the following: ‘Did not God exist
when there was nothing else?’ He will say, ‘Yes.’ Then say to him:
“When He created things, did He create them in Himself or outside
Himself?’ Here he will have to choose one of three responses. If he
claims that God created things inside His self, this is Unbelief
(kufr), since it implies that jinn and humans and devils (shaydatin)
are in God’s self. If he says, He created them outside Himself and
then entered into them, this too is Unbelief, since it implies that
(among those places) He entered into (were) deserted, dirty, and
despicable places. If he says that He created them outside Himself
and did not enter into them, this amounts to a total retraction of his
position. And this is the position of the People of Sunna.;!

Over the course of his argument, Imam Ahmad adduces no

less than twenty-two verses from the Qur’an, the cumulative
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 13

effect of which is to give the impression that he is engaging in

nothing more than tafsir. It becomes clear, however, to anyone
who follows his discussion from beginning to end, that these
verses are being ‘explained’ in light of a master principle to the
effect that God is not everywhere and no matter what the
linguistic possibilities of these verses might be they can never
be left to imply that He is.*? Of course, like every theologian,
Imam Ahmad would insist that this ‘master principle’ was itself
derived from revelation. But in the absence of a unanimous
consensus (ijma‘) to back this derivation, its authority could
only stand on the claim (implied or explicit) that it was the
direct and inevitable result of a method that was itself prescribed
by revelation. This, however, raises its own set of difficulties
and takes us to the second of the two facts alluded to above.
While scripture may be the object of the theologian’s
thinking, scripture does not prescribe any particular method or
modality for that thinking. The Qur’an is not a book of logic,
nor a manual on formal reasoning or systematic thinking. To be
sure, the Qur’an points to several prerequisites for receiving
and benefiting from its guidance, e.g., humility, God-
consciousness, and a willingness to use one’s mind. In several
places it even models rational arguments against the rejecters of
truth. But while the Qur’an urges its audience to ‘think’
(tafakkur), ‘ponder’ (tadabbur), and ‘reason’ (‘aq/), it never
tells them how to do any of this.** Indeed, despite its positive
valuation of reason and its frequent and forceful injunctions to
utilize one’s faculties, the Qur’an does not present itself as a
handbook on formal reasoning. The same is true of the Sunna.
Now, the natural inference to be drawn from this is that God
does not tell us how to think for the same reason that He does
not tell us how to breathe or sleep: we already know how to
think; for thinking is as innate to human nature as is breathing
or sleeping. On this understanding, the early Muslims would
naturally apply to the Qur’an the same method and standard of
thinking that they used for any other serious endeavour. They
would think on the Qur’an the same way they thought seriously
about anything else. And this they would do, inevitable
14 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

exceptions notwithstanding, with the zeal and earnestness of

any new converts to a new faith. Initially, this would lead to
little more than normal and manageable levels of discord. Real
problems would arise, however, as Islam moved out of its
isolation in Arabia to settle among the inhabitants of the world
of Late Antiquity, where geography, history, and tradition had
endowed different individuals and communities with more
fundamentally different ways and approaches to thinking. These
different endowments would lead in turn to different attitudes
towards and approaches to theology. This was the beginning
and most important source of theological discord in Islam, a full
appreciation of which has only been obscured by the Muslim
theologians’ rhetoric of transcendence.
Yet, the typical Western approach, which prides itself on its
ability to see through the claims and attributions of the Muslim
theologians, has not faired much better. Rather, it too has tended
to impede rather than promote a proper understanding of the
impact of these differential historical endowments.
It is common knowledge that the influence of Christian
theology, the Persian Zoroastrian and Manichaean traditions,
and Indian and especially Greek philosophy on Muslim
theological discourse was both fundamental and enduring.**
Traditionally, however, Western scholars have portrayed this
influence as an instance of cross-civilizational borrowing. At
the same time, Muslims are said to have denied or played down
this influence, based on their ideological commitment to the
premise that ‘Islam is self-sufficient and that in Qur’an and
Hadith it contains in essentials all the religious and moral truth
required by all humanity to the end of time.’?> Under ordinary
circumstances, fear of self-incrimination might pre-empt any
reaction to such a view. But such depictions mask an important
point that bears directly on our understanding of the nature and
causes of theological discord—and thus the requirements and
possibilities of theological tolerance—in Islam. Simply stated,
the notion of Muslim ‘borrowing’ is based on an artificial
bifurcation of the world of Late Antiquity and early Islam into
Greek and Persian (alien), on the one hand, and Arab-Muslim
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 15

(native), on the other, followed by the assumption that any

elements of the former found among the latter must be the
result of cross-civilizational borrowing. This picture becomes a
bit more complicated, however, when we consider that the
overwhelming majority of the early Muslims—as well as those
who would become Arabs—had theretofore been ‘Greeks,’
Mazdakites, Manichaeans, Christians, and Zoroastrians.
R. Bulliet goes a long way in confirming this in his book
Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period,* and it is being
pointed out with increasing frequency and clarity by historians
of Late Antiquity, e.g., P. Brown, G.W. Bowersock, and
O. Grabar in their recent edited volume, Late Antiquity.>’ In fact,
in that same volume, the Islamic historian Hugh Kennedy writes:

Of all the dividing lines set up between academic disciplines in the

western intellectual tradition, the frontier between classical and
Islamic studies has proved among the most durable and
impenetrable...[W]hereas late antiquity can be seen as part of the
broader history of western civilization, the history of the Islamic
world cannot. Yet reflection will soon suggest that the changes
cannot have been so sudden and dramatic, especially at the level of
the structures of everyday life, and that the Islamic was as much,
and as little, a continuation of late antiquity as was western
Christendom.*®

On this understanding, the notion of the early Muslims

‘borrowing’ from Hellenism (and the other traditions) would be
something akin to the notion of American Muslims ‘borrowing’
from the traditions of capitalism, democracy, or Black Religion.
Rather than a conscious borrowing, this influence would be
more aptly viewed as an unconscious (or in some instances,
conscious) retention of ideas and concepts that were assumed to
be just as valid under Islam as they were under the old order.
My point here is not to deny or play down the existence of
Greek and other elements in Muslim theological discourse, or
even that (later) Muslims may have disliked admitting this. My
point is, rather, to challenge the notion that this ‘borrowing’
was the result of a conscious choice in the face of other known,
16 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

and presumably Islamic, alternatives, that under ‘the attraction

of Greek thought,’*? Muslims went so far as to import ideas and
concepts from the Aegean Sea. If the Muslim theologians’
rhetoric of transcendence has served to obscure the role of the
various endowments brought by the early converts, the Western
tendency to racialize (en route to appropriating) the Greeks
(while downplaying the impact of the other traditions) has been
no less misleading.
The spread of Islam outside the Arabian Peninsula brought
into the fold of the Muslim empire a range of peoples, cultures,
intellectual and religious traditions. In the early period, there
was no such thing as ‘Islamic thought,’ like the usil al-figh,
kalam, and usil al-din that would later be so designated. As
such, conversion to Islam did not oblige individuals to convert
to any particular tradition of thinking. Rather, converts would
come to Islam with the intention of ‘thinking’ on the data of
revelation in the best way they knew how, be that way grounded
in a Greek, Manichaean, or Arab nativist tradition. Over the
course of the formative period, some of these traditions would
be able to sustain themselves as legitimate while others would
be rejected as alien or even antithetical to Islam. In the final
analysis, however, all of them would share a common trait: they
were all historically determined, ultimately external to
revelation.*° Recognizing this fact would appear to be the sine
qua non for the success of any religion with universalist claims.
It is interesting, however, to see so many who champion the
universalist claims of Islam unable or unwilling to recognize
this fact. For his part, not only would al-Ghazali embrace this
reality, his Faysal would constitute an attempt to construct a
criterion for orthodoxy based directly on it.*!

C. THEOLOGY BETWEEN TRADITIONALISM AND

RATIONALISM

Directly related to the relationship between theology and history

is the relationship between what Islamicists have termed
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 17

Traditionalism and Rationalism, the two main approaches to

theology in Islam. To date, modern scholarship has been
unanimous in its depiction of the basic distinction between these
two approaches as residing in their differential relationship to
reason. My contention, however, is that it is primarily history
that divides these two approaches and that Traditionalism is no
more devoid of the use of reason than Rationalism is of a
reliance on tradition. As such, these two approaches are better
understood as different traditions of reason. This view of things
has direct and obvious implications for our understanding of the
nature and meaning of theological discord in Islam. Moreover,
in addition to enabling us to cut through some of the fictions
and rhetoric generated by both theological approaches, this
insight is critical to a full appreciation of al-Ghazali’s manner
of proceeding in Faysal.
A representative example of the standard view of the
relationship between Traditionalism and Rationalism appears in
a recent work by Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology:
Traditionalism and Rationalism. Abrahamov begins by noting
that reason and tradition typically oppose each other,

mainly because tradition causes continuity, and hence stability,

while reason causes change, and hence instability. Tradition is
usually traced back to a great authority such as the teachings of
great ancestors, while reason is based on personal efforts and does
not submit to external authority. In the domain of religion, the
debate between tradition and reason is sharper than in other
domains, for tradition has the authority of divine revelation.”

Abrahamov goes on to define Traditionalism and Rationalism,

beginning with the concept of tradition.

The word ‘tradition’ means literally handing over, but it also

includes the object of handing over, which, in our case, is practices
and beliefs. The words or deeds of Muhammad and his followers,
the Companions (al-sahaba) and their Followers (tabi ‘in), were
handed down to posterity in a kind of communication called hadith
(a tradition, literally a tale or a report).*
18 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Traditionalists are thus

those who have regarded religious knowledge as deriving from the

Revelation (the Qur’an), the Tradition (the Sunna) and the
Consensus (ijmd@ ‘) and preferred these sources to reason in treating
religious matters. The Traditionalists are mostly named ahl al-sunna
wa ’l-jama‘a.“

As for Rationalism, Professor Abrahamov defines it as

the tendency to consider reason the principal device or one of the

principal devices to reach the truth in religion, and the preference
of reason to revelation and tradition in dealing with some theological
matters, mainly when a conflict arose between them.”

Abrahamov notes that the Rationalists of whom he speaks

were not those who held reason to be the sole authority in
attaining the truth, for such persons were generally regarded as
Unbelievers and excluded from the pale of the Faith. By
Rationalists he means, rather, ‘those who attacked the
Traditionalists and their doctrines on the basis of reason,
claiming that much, but not all, of religious knowledge can be
known through reason.’** In Muslim parlance, the Rationalists
to whom he refers were known as the ‘ahl al-kalam,’ or
‘mutakallimun,’ and their theological science was known as
‘ilm al-kalam’ or simply ‘kalam.’ Finally, in order to avoid the
mistake of overgeneralization, Abrahamov notes that a
Traditionalist ‘may be rational in dealing with a theological
issue...but he may not ascribe to reason any advantage over the
Qur’an or the Sunna.’*’ Similarly,

there is no pure rationalism, in the sense that all religious issues

derive from reason. There are different degrees of rationalism; the
most rationalist group is the Mu‘tazila who used reason as a source
of knowledge in many theological issues, whereas the Ash‘arites
are less rationalist than the Mu‘tazilites. But there is pure
traditionalism. Traditionalists who have not used reason in deriving
the principles of religion can be called pure traditionalists.‘
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 19

The remainder of the book is an impressive array of material

from various Rationalist and Traditionalist theologians,
Abrahamov’s analysis of which aims at demonstrating the
validity, scope, and interconnectedness of the definitions and
categories outlined above. The latter are in turn repeated in
the book’s concluding Summary.
To go directly to my point, Professor Abrahamov’s treatment
reflects the common tendency to embrace the fictions and
ideological positions put forth by both Traditionalism and
Rationalism and then to proceed to explain the history of Muslim
theology through this cross-eyed vision. On this approach,
however, Traditionalism and Rationalism can only be seen either
through their own eyes or through the eyes of their adversaries,
which means that, at any point in the analysis, our understanding
will be informed by only one of their constructions of reason or
tradition. This, however, inevitably leads away from rather than
toward the real issue, namely, the attempt on the part of both
camps to reify its definitions of reason and tradition such that
anyone who claims to rely on either must pay homage to their
views. The inadequacy of this approach is manifested in the
recurrent phenomenon of scholars starting out with thick and
ostensibly unbreachable boundaries between reason and tradition
(or revelation), only to collapse the one into the other as they
move into the actual doctrines and justifications of Rationalists
or Traditionalists. This, again, is the result of a failure to
apprehend the real source of contention, namely that both
Traditionalism and Rationalism are human constructs that
purport to represent transcendent or ahistorical approaches to
revelation (including Qur’an, Sunna, and hadith®’). At the same
time, both sides’ resistance to the other’s pretensions prevents
them from agreeing on the terms of reference, even as they both
continue to rely upon reason and tradition.
To be more specific, Rationalism is really an attempt to
conflate and identify Aristotelian logic, along with certain
Neoplatonic metaphysical assumptions and principles (in their
Arabic form), with ‘human reason,’ i.e., ‘agl or nazar.*!
Traditionalism, on the other hand, is the attempt to conflate and
20 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

identify a particular construction of the past with ‘the way things

have always been’. Rationalists often invoke tradition (including
hadith and tracing the provenance of their tradition back to the
Pious Ancestors or salaf**) but they are hostile toward the
authority claimed by Traditionalists for the latter’s construction
of that tradition. Meanwhile, Rationalist writings reflect a clear
and sustained recognition of the authority of the Aristotelian-
Neoplatonic tradition, including the propriety of following it by
way of taglid.°’ Traditionalists, on the other hand, use reason—
even aspects of Aristotelian reason—but they do not recognize
the tradition of Aristotelian reason as an ultimate authority.
Moreover, they are appalled by the Rationalists’ selective
acceptance and rejection of what they (Traditionalists) identify
as ‘Islamic’ tradition.** Yet, compared with the entire record of
everything handed down from the past, the Traditionalists’
normative ‘tradition’ shows itself to be a synthetic rather than a
‘natural’ product, bearing clear signs of selective endorsement.
At bottom, both of these approaches appeal to the notion that
their way of understanding is not only ‘Islamic’ but ‘natural’ or
‘God-given,’ as opposed to ‘artificial,’ ‘contrived,’ ‘alien,’ or
even ‘man-made’.** This underlies the basic argument that each
seeks to sustain against the other. And virtually all of their
rhetoric is directed toward this end.
Let me try to clarify this point in more concrete terms,
beginning with Rationalism.
Professor Abrahamov defined the Rationalists as ‘those who
attacked the traditionalists and their doctrines on the basis of
reason’.*° In point of fact, however, this statement reflects an
acceptance of the Rationalists’ conflation of reason with the
Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition. This becomes clear when we
consider that, while the fundamental criticism levied by
Rationalists against Traditionalist doctrine was that it was
anthropomorphic (and anthropomorphism, particularly tashbih
and tajsim, as opposed to outright infidelity, idolatry, or
associationism, was the critical issue separating the two camps”)
this ‘anthropomorphism’ was not at all grounded in plain
‘reason’ but in a particular reading of the Aristotelian-
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 21

Neoplatonic tradition. Otherwise, it would have been perfectly

possible to reconcile any number of ostensibly anthropomorphic
Traditionalist doctrines with the dictates of ‘plain’ or even
formal reasoning. It was only Rationalist rhetoric, particularly
their conflation of reason, i.e., ‘ag/ and nazar, with a particular
construction of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, that
concealed this fact. Meanwhile, modern scholarship’s
identification with this rhetoric—and this Aristotelian-
Neoplatonic tradition—has helped to preserve the power and
functionality of this conflation and to keep it from becoming
unmasked.
Perhaps the simplest way to demonstrate this point would be
through an insight gleaned from the writings of the philosopher-
theologian Charles Hartshorne. Hartshorne was one of the
leaders of a movement among modern Christian thinkers
commonly known as Process Theology (or Process Theism).
Recognizing the relationship between Christian theology and
Aristotle, Process Theology began with a critique of the
Aristotelian obsession with ‘being’ or ‘existence’ as the ultimate
concern of philosophy and theology. This critique is directly
relevant to Muslim theology. For, as the Japanese Islamicist
T. Izutsu put it, ‘from the earliest phase of the development of
Islamic philosophy, the concept of “existence” (wujiid), as a
heritage from Greek philosophy, was the greatest metaphysical
problem the Muslim thinkers had to face.’® In place of being,
Hartshorne (following Alfred North Whitehead and others)
wanted to substitute ‘becoming’ or ‘process’ as a more realistic
representation of reality, whence the name ‘Process Theology’.
This brought him to a re-reading of Aristotle, the most important
by-product of which would be (for our present purposes) a whole
range of alternative possibilities in the relationship between
reason and ostensibly anthropomorphic ideas, possibilities that
have been effectively suppressed by the rhetoric of the Muslim
Rationalists.
Beginning with the Aristotelian categories ‘necessary,’
‘contingent,’ and ‘impossible,’ (i.e., wajib, mumkin, muhal) with
which students of Muslim theology are all too familiar,
22 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Hartshorne points out that, in reality, ‘necessary’ is

indistinguishable. from ‘always’ and that it is only due to the
fact that B always follows A or that B never follows A that we
can speak of the causal relationship between them as being
‘necessary’ or ‘impossible’. Time, in other words, not space (or
‘being,’ as some sort of third dimension), is the template that
provides these statements with meaning. On such an
understanding, a ‘necessary’ event or being whose existence—
as a necessary event or being—cannot be established at the
moment (since the ‘always’ needed to do this can only be
established after the passing of an infinity of time) must be in a
state of becoming, since its necessariness pre-empts the
possibility of its non-existence. Similarly, for a thing to be
eternal is for it to be necessary in the sense of its always existing.
But this too demands a constant state of becoming, since it can
never not be. On this view, it is ‘becoming,’ according to
Hartshorne, as opposed to ‘being’ that is the true and constant
template of these logical categories and the reality to which
they refer. But, if “becoming’—which in the context of Muslim
theology is universally held to be an accident (‘arad)—is
admitted as the basis of the ‘necessary,’ then the meaning of
‘anthropomorphism’ would have to be radically altered, if indeed
it retained any meaning at all. For in the context of Muslim
theological discourse, anthropomorphism was precisely the
attribution of accidents (including change or becoming) to God,
not the simple attribution of human qualities to God.®!
Hartshorne also notes that Aristotle had learned from Plato
that the eternal-necessary was superior to the contingent-possible
and that the temporal and changing was inherently inferior.
Hartshorne insists that this is a fallacy that can be easily detected
once the following is taken into account. There are two kinds of
necessary-eternal being: 1) one that is necessary-eternal not only
in its existence but in all its nature, what he calls the ‘necessary
simpliciter’; and 2) one that is necessary-eternal in its existence
and essential nature but not in all its reality, which may include
inessential or changing qualities and states (e.g., the heavens
according to Aristotle, which were eternal-necessary but moved
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 25

in a circular locomotion). Now, Aristotle had held the first kind

of eternal-necessary to be superior to the second, presumably
on the view that actuality is superior to potentiality. Hartshorne
points out, however, that it is only the actuality of a given
potential that is superior to that potential unrealized, and that
even this notion approaches the point of diminishing returns
when the total absence of all unrealized potential comes to be
thought of as the best of all possibilities. In other words, there is
something counter-intuitive in the notion that the inability to
improve is somehow superior to the ability to do so. Similarly,
while the second type of eternal-necessary may lack duration
and security in some of its aspects, the necessary simpliciter,
although it enjoys duration and security in all its aspects, may
lack concreteness, richness, and definite content. For, again, the
actualization of all potential could only obtain, if at all, in the
abstract. And on this understanding, it may be better to have
absolute security and concreteness (including change) than it is
to have absolute security without concreteness.” Such an
understanding has obvious implications for such constructs as
perfection (kamal) and imperfection (naqs), which informed so
many of the debates between Traditionalists and Rationalists,
e.g., the debate over whether God could have affective traits
such as happiness or anger, as indicated in a number of hadith.
These possibilities, however, are, again, obscured by Rationalist
rhetoric.
To be sure, there are many aspects of Hartshorne’s philosophy
to which one might take exception. Indeed, Process Theology
includes a number of tenets (explicit and implied) that any
Muslim—tTraditionalist or Rationalist—would definitely
reject.“ But whatever charges one may make against
Hartshorne, one cannot accuse him of flouting reason. His views
are rational, sophisticated, and just as grounded in formal
reasoning as the Aristotelian concepts he rejects. More
importantly, Hartshorne’s philosophy exposes the Rationalist
ruse represented in the conflation of ‘reason’ with the
Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition by showing that there is no
necessary contradiction between ‘reason’ and the ostensibly
24 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

anthropomorphic doctrines of the Traditionalists. The only

contradiction that exists is between these doctrines and the
Rationalists’ construction of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
tradition. Otherwise, on Hartshorne’s reasoning, it might be no
more unreasonable to affirm God’s mounting the Throne, or His
descending to the lower heavens in the last third of the night or
His laughing at His penitent servant, than it would be to negate
these doctrines or explain them away.
In sum, Muslim Rationalism was both a human construct and
the heir to a concrete and very specific tradition of formal
reasoning. To those who inherited or later subscribed to this
tradition, its method of proceeding may have come so naturally,
and the results of its application may have appeared so
incontrovertible, that non-reason or irrationality appeared to be
the only imaginable alternative. This, at least, would be the
ideological position maintained by the Muslim Rationalists. And
it was ultimately this ideological position that sustained the
stigma and stereotype of fideism and opposition to reason being
the hallmark of Traditionalism.
Turning to Traditionalism, before attempting to demonstrate
that it too is a human construct that tries to pass itself off as a
transcendent order, I should first like to clarify what I mean by
this charge. My argument is not that what Traditionalists claim
to be tradition is invented or concocted or a misrepresentation
of or about the past. My point is rather that the past—as a
simple matter of history—does not pass unprocessed and
unmediated into the present. Instead, someone has to make
decisions about which aspects of the past are non-essential and
thus allowed to drop out, and which elements of the present are
consistent with the past and thus eligible for admission into the
sanctum of tradition. Traditionalists, also referred to as
Hanbalites,© are those who both defend the process via which
these decisions have been made by a particular party in the
past—namely those who rejected the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
tradition—and see themselves as heirs to that party, on the basis
of which they claim the right to oversee this process in the
present. At bottom, what separates the Traditionalists from the
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 23

Rationalists is not so much that each assigns different levels of

importance or authority to tradition per se, but rather the different
grounds that each recognizes as the basis upon which this
process of selective endorsement can and should be carried out.
Perhaps the simplest way of demonstrating this point would
be through an insight gleaned from the work of the Ghanaian
scholar Kwame Gyekye. In his book, Tradition and Modernity:
Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience,© Gyekye
grapples with the problem of how to reconcile the concept of
modernity with the concept of tradition such that the assumed
incompatibility between the two might be reduced and traditional
African societies might be able, in good conscience, to adopt
certain aspects of modernity. To this end, in a chapter entitled
“Tradition and Modernity,’ Gyekye sets out to expose the degree
to which the polarity between tradition and modernity has been
exaggerated by a fundamental misunderstanding of tradition. It
is this discussion that provides the relevant insight into the issue
at hand.
Beginning with several scholarly definitions of tradition (from
the Latin traditum, to hand down from the past), Gyekye notes
that all of them centre around the concept of transmission or
simple handing down—H.B. Acton: ‘a belief or practice
transmitted from one generation to another and accepted as
authoritative or deferred to, without argument’; E. Shils:
‘anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to
the present’; S. Fleischacker: ‘a set of customs passed down
over the generations, and a set of beliefs and values endorsing
those customs’.®’ Gyekye points out, however, that these
definitions are all problematic inasmuch as they fail to recognize
the fundamental difference between transmitting beliefs and
practices to future generations and merely placing these at a
present generation’s disposal. This is critical inasmuch as, as far
as eStablishing tradition is concerned, the operative element is
not the handing down but the preservation of beliefs and
practices. For it is only if what is handed down is actually
preserved (and according to Gyekye, for several generations®)
that a tradition is formed. This preservation, however, can be
26 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

carried out not by the transmitting generation, but only by the

receiving one, which for any number of reasons may choose to
abandon or modify what it receives. This process of
maintaining, abandoning, or modifying entails in turn an act
of evaluation, which, Gyekye reiterates, would be irrelevant
were tradition merely what is handed down from the past.”
On this understanding, he redefines tradition as:

any cultural product that was created or pursued by past

generations and that, having been accepted and preserved, in
whole or in part, by successive generations, has been maintained
to the present.”°

In sum, tradition is not the result of the simple act of

transmission or handing down, but rather of a process of
evaluation, amplification, suppression, refinement, and assessing
the polarity between would-be tradition and indigenous
innovations and/or non-indigenous ideas and practices. Equally
if not more important, as long as no essential elements are
deemed to have been sacrificed in this process of ‘reception’,
the result will be a tradition that, while only a simulacrum of
the original, is vested with all the authority of having resulted
from a direct act of handing down. In other words, as long as a
set of ideas or practices, regardless of their actual origin, receive
endorsement from the custodial generation, they will enjoy the
full status and authority of authentic tradition, despite their
inclusion of elements unknown to the ancestors or founding
generation.
Gyekye’s notion of critical evaluation and selective
endorsement is not without application to the history of Islam.
Indeed, for this not to be the case would mean that, following
the death of the Prophet all the way up to the time of the
Traditionalist movement, Muslims continued to eat exactly what
the Prophet and his Companions ate, to wear exactly what they
wore, to talk exactly like they talked, and to admit nothing from
the repertoire of indigenous innovations or non-indigenous ideas
and practices. This may be the ideological position asserted by
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE Din

some (perhaps Professor Abrahamov’s ‘pure traditionalists’),

but the history and development of the Arabic language, mosque
architecture, Muslim educational, religious, and quasi-religious
institutions, simply do not bear this out. For example, in his
epistle, Ikhtilaf Malik wa al-Shafi ‘i, Imam al-Shafi‘i (d. 204/820)
criticizes Imam Malik (d. 179/795) and others for relating
Prophetic hadith and then abandoning them on the basis of the
practice of the Rightly Guided Caliphs or the people of
Medina.”! Similarly, in his famous al-Risala, he complains that
Imam Malik often justified positions on the basis of an alleged
Medinese consensus while he himself (al-Shafi‘i) had
encountered scholars in Medina who went against this would-be
consensus.” If nothing else, al-Shafi‘i’s writings indicate clearly
that between the generations of the Prophet, the Rightly Guided
Caliphs, and Malik a steady process of selective endorsement
was maintained, which, incidentally, al-Shafi‘i effectively insists
should be continued (albeit on a different basis, namely
Prophetic hadith exclusively). Similarly, there is evidence of
Gyekye’s notion of processing tradition in the area of theology.
For example, according to al-Tabari, when Imam Ahmad
b. Hanbal (d. 241/855) was first asked to respond to the Caliph
al-Ma‘min’s letter asserting the createdness of the Qur’4n, he is
reported to have said: ‘It is the word of God; I have nothing to
add beyond this (huwa kalam Allah la azidu ‘alayha).’” In
time, however, it would become the standard position of the
Traditionalist-Hanbalite school that the Qur’an is emphatically
the uncreated word of God, a position with which Imam Ahmad
himself would later identify. In sum, all of this supports the
conclusion that Tradition, as identified by the Traditionalists,
was not the result of a simple act of transmission or handing
down, but rather of a process of selectively endorsing and
suppressing old and new ideas and practices.
The real point of contention between Traditionalism and
Rationalism is the criteria relied upon in this process of selection.
The decision to drop an old pattern or admit a new one (speaking
here in the context of traditions of ideas and beliefs) would be
based inter alia upon how rationally palatable, widely
28 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

understood, or broadly appealing it was. If, however, the prism

through which these questions were asked and answered was
the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, much less of what had
been handed down from the Arabian past would likely pass
muster. From this vantage-point, Traditionalism, as noted earlier,
might be defined as that movement which, in its rejection of the
Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, was appalled at the
suggestion by those who endorsed that tradition that certain
aspects of what had been handed down from the Arabian past
were inferior, deleterious, or simply of little value or meaning.
Yet in their own effort to distil ‘Tradition’ from the cumulative
repertoire of beliefs and practices in circulation, Traditionalists
would also rely on reason (which is why they too, and not just
the proponents of kalam, should be considered theologians” );
they simply would not rely (as a rule) on the Aristotelian-
Neoplatonic (or Manichaean or Zoroastrian) tradition of reason.
Rationalists, meanwhile, understanding that what was being
touted as Tradition was plainly a synthetic product, proceeded
on the notion that if the Traditionalists were authorized to engage
in selective endorsement, so too should they be. But from a
Traditionalist perspective, to cede this to the Rationalists would
be to both saddle and shoe their Trojan horse. This the
Traditionalists simply would not do. And their refusal to do so
would heighten the utility of a rhetoric that equated Tradition
with simple transmission. Ultimately, this rhetoric would go a
long way in sustaining the charge and promoting the image of
Rationalism as an ‘innovation,’ unique, irreverent, and mildly
duplicitous in its selective appropriation of the legacy of the
Prophet alongside that of Late Antiquity.
To hold the true source of Traditionalism’s strength to reside
in its ‘having the authority of revelation’” is to take the
Traditionalists at their word, and their ideological word at that.
The real strength of Traditionalism lies in the weakness of the
attribution of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic (and other)
tradition(s) to the Prophetic legacy. For on this weakness,
Traditionalism emerges as the natural process of human thought
and thus the natural approach to scripture that is present and
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 29

available both before and without any intentional act of

acquisition.”” Moreover, Traditionalism stands as a safe haven
in which men can seek refuge from the perceived treachery of
their own minds as the intellectualism of kalam reaches the
point of diminishing return and the haunting disappointment of
the failed promise of theological certainty sets in. This is clearly
what is being alluded to in the reports of deathbed repentance
by famous mutakallims like al-Juwayni (d. 478/1085) and Fakhr
al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1209). As we shall see, even al-Ghazali,
who was never fully disabused of his belief in the power and
basic correctness of a properly ‘Islamicized’ Aristotelian-
Neoplatonic tradition, would be drawn in his later years to the
comfort and reassurance of the simple piety of the
Traditionalists, even as he would ultimately reject their rhetoric
of transcendence.

D. THEOLOGY BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND

HERESY

At bottom, the struggle between Traditionalism and Rationalism

was a struggle to determine the proper reading of scripture and
to distinguish this reading from those that were to be deprecated
and eschewed as improper. I have referred to these readings as
‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ (or heterodoxy) respectively. Several
scholars have insisted, however, that the concept of orthodoxy
is not really applicable to Islam. While I have no interest in
quibbling over terms, I question the propriety of the notion that
the differences between Christianity’s and Islam’s ways of
regulating theological dissent are fundamental while the
similarities between the two are not. More importantly, to deny
the existence of the concept and value of orthodoxy in Islam
denies us access to an important aspect of what is at stake in
Muslim theological writing in general and in al-Ghazali’s Faysal
in particular.
30 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

A typical representation of the view that denies the existence

of orthodoxy in Islam is offered by Professor W.M. Watt:

The term ‘orthodox’ applies in the first place to Eastern

Christendom, where there was an authority to say what was
‘orthodoxy’ or ‘right belief’ and what was ‘heresy’. In Islam,
however, there was no such authority. There was only the main or
central body of opinion in the various schools or sections of the
community. In these, too, there was not always the emphasis on the
intellectual aspect of religion that there was in Eastern Christendom
(though such an emphasis is sometimes found). Thus it is best in
Islamic studies to avoid the term ‘orthodox’ and to ask instead
whether there was a central body of moderate opinion.”

In my view, Professor Watt (and those who agree with him)

mistakenly assumes that differences in the mechanism via which
Islam and Christianity seek to regulate theological dissent
precludes them from taking an identical interest in arriving at
the same end. The notion that there is, properly speaking, no
‘orthodoxy’ in Islam is based on the idea that such an orthodoxy
could only be established and sustained by an institution that
was backed by formal authority (which as used is closer to my
understanding of power”). To my mind, however, all that is
needed to establish and sustain any orthodoxy is authority, full
stop, which may be formal or informal.” That is to say, through
the use of informal authority—which is based on reputation as
opposed to formal investiture—religious communities can
establish and sustain orthodoxy even in the absence of a formal
ecclesiastical hierarchy. By ignoring, meanwhile, the effects and
possibilities of informal authority, Professor Watt overlooks
what every member of a religious community knows by
experience: the threat of stigma, malicious gossip, ostracism, or
verbal attack by respected members in the community is far
more imminent, far more effective, and far more determinative
of religious belief and behaviour than is the threat of formal
excommunication. All of these are instruments of informal
authority. And if through such instruments a community is able
to regulate theological beliefs and gain public recognition for
 INTRODUCTION: PART ONE 31

what it deems to be ‘right’ as opposed to ‘wrong’ beliefs, I see no

reason why these should be credited with any lesser status than
those established by a formally constituted church or Sanhedrin.
My point in all of this is not to argue, after the fashion of
Muslim apologists, that Islam was not devoid of what the now
ascending civilization was known to have had. My point is rather
to prepare the reader to appreciate the full gravity of what is at
stake in al-Ghazali’s Faysal. Al-Ghazali is not simply trying to
gain recognition for ‘a central body of moderate opinion’; he is
advocating a criterion on the basis of which some people will
be admitted to the Faith and others will be excluded; he is
talking about right (or, more properly, acceptable) versus wrong
(or unacceptable) doctrine. In short, al-Ghazali is talking about
orthodoxy and heresy. Meanwhile, the fact that he is not
speaking on behalf of a formal ecclesiastical institution actually
increases rather than diminishes the gravity of his enterprise.
For it is precisely because there is no such institution that issues
of orthodoxy and heresy are subject to being decided via a crass
mobilization of biases by groups and individuals who either
have informal authority of their own or are able to tap into that
of someone else, a situation that is clearly open to abuse. Indeed,
it was precisely this type of abuse that al-Ghazali had in mind
when he lamented,

If you attribute a doctrine to a person of whom the people think

well and you provide proof that this doctrine actually issued from
him, they will accept it, even if it is false; and if you trace a
doctrine to a person of whom they think ill, they will reject it, even
if it is true. Invariably, they rely on men in order to know the truth,
rather than relying on the truth in order to know men.”

The cumulative effect of each group seeking to privilege its

views at the expense of others’ would be to expose the
community to an ever upwardly spiralling litany of exaggerated
and exclusivist claims. Some of these might even succeed in
gaining the backing of the state.’ But, more importantly,
whether they did or not, these claims retained their potential as
32 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

categories of exclusion. In Faysal, al-Ghazali is not at all

concerned about running foul of any state-sponsored creed. He
is deeply troubled, however, by the atmosphere of intolerance,
mutual suspicion, and psychological intimidation engendered
by narrow and underinclusive definitions of orthodoxy
manufactured and brandished with reckless abandon. Ultimately,
this was a liability that Sunni Islam would incur as a result of
its decision to place the individual autonomy of the jurist-
theologian over the establishment of a formal Church.® Instead
of a Church, Sunnism would opt for a system of determining
orthodoxy via the unanimous consensus (ijma@’) of the jurists-
theologians. As far as theology was concerned, however,
consensus would prove now too blunt an instrument to
accommodate doctrinal latitude, now too porous an edifice to
put a permanent end to doctrinal disputes. In the end, therefore,
it would be left to individuals to put forth and champion
theological views to the end of gaining the assent of the
Community, with all that this entailed in the way of the
aforementioned liabilities. This was a critical aspect of the
broader context in which al-Ghazali wrote Faysal, and only
against this backdrop can the aim and significance of his project
be fully appreciated.
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Introduction

Part Two

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A. AL-GHAZALI: RELEVANT ASPECTS OF HIS LIFE
AND TIMES

Few figures in the history of Islam have been studied with the
frequency and depth of al-Ghazali. The details of his life are
well-documented and have been repeated in several books and
articles on various aspects of his thought—legal, theological,
philosophical, mystical. Much of this data is supplied by
al-Ghazali’s ‘autobiography’, al-Mungidh min al-dalal. In the
present section, I shall try to limit myself to those facts and
details that are necessary to an adequate reading of Faysal.
Abt Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Muhammad
al-Ghazali was born in north-east Persia in the year 450/1058.
Orphaned at an early age, he began his education in his native
town of Tus, later moving to Jurjan (on the Caspian Sea) and
then Nishapur, where he came under the tutelage of the great
Ash‘arite theologian and Shafi‘i jurist, Imam al-Haramayn
al-Juwayni (d. 478/1085). A precocious youth, he soon acquired
a reputation that went beyond his immediate circle of teachers
and colleagues. As a result, he was invited in 484/1091 to the
capital at Baghdad by the Seljuq vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, to
assume an endowed chair in Shafi‘i law at the famous Nizamiya
college, the most prestigious institution in the eastern caliphate,
if not the entire Muslim world. He was only thirty-three years
old at the time (thirty-four in lunar years). He would soon
become one of the most prominent men in Baghdad.
Barely four years into his tenure at the Nizamiya, however,
al-Ghazali suffered a nervous breakdown so severe that he lost
the ability to speak or eat. This had been precipitated by a
painful confrontation with his own religiosity. In a most enviable
feat of courage, al-Ghazali admitted to himself that his intention
36 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

in pursuing religious knowledge had not been pure, that the

pursuit of fame and status had been the motive behind all his
achievements, that for all his knowledge of the religious sciences
he was still not possessed of certainty, and that when all had
been said and done he was religiously almost bankrupt, in his
own mind, destined for Hell.8* Al-Ghazali had immersed himself
in the scholarly culture of the day and had witnessed (and
experienced) the corrosive effects of a rampant intellectualism
in which truth often took a back seat to reputation. This
engendered a certain contempt on his part for his profession,
and aroused his suspicions about the limits of reason. It also
contributed to the development of his belief in the superiority of
what I would characterize as a ‘sober Sufism,’ i.e., Sufism shorn
of any monism (later identified as wahdat al-wujiid), antinomian
tendencies, saint-cultus (i.e., tawassul, istighatha), and a total
dependence upon a spiritual guide or shaykh. Determined to
find spiritual solace and restore his relationship with God,
al-Ghazali decided, some time towards the end of 488/1095, to
abandon his professional career and to leave Baghdad. Travelling
as a mendicant Sufi, he visited several cities, including
Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Mecca, and Medina, where he
spent long hours in contemplation and spiritual exercises. Then,
at the end of 499/1106, after a sojourn of more than ten years,
he decided to return to Nishapur.** It was here that he wrote
Faysal al-tafriga, just around the turn of the 6th/12th century.®
He died only a few years later, in 505/1111.

1. THE JHYA’ AND THE CULTURE OF THE ‘ULAMA’

It was during this ten-year period of self-imposed exile and
reassessment that al-Ghazali wrote one of his most famous and
influential works, [hya’ ‘uliim al-din (Revival of the Religious
Sciences). This was a multi-faceted work, a voluminous
commentary on the overall state of Muslim religious life and
learning. It dealt with everything from ethics to theology, from
law to mysticism, from psychology to history and more. To my
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 37

mind, however, the real significance of the Jhya’ emerges when

it is read not as a work on theology or mysticism or law, but as
a social commentary of the genre of Ibn al-Jawzi’s Talbis Iblis
(The Devil’s Delusions)®® or Taj al-Din al-Subki’s Mu ‘id
al-ni‘am wa mubid al-nigam (Retrieving God’s Bounty and
Averting His Scorn).*’ For in the [hya’, in addition to al-Ghazali
the consummate scholar, we see al-Ghazali the ‘public
intellectual’, who begins not with the punctilios of academe, but
with his own experience and the desire to use his knowledge to
improve his and other people’s lives rather than simply add to
the body of accumulated scholarship in a given field. This
orientation would remain with him for the rest of his life. And it
would inform Faysal, and probably everything he wrote after
leaving Baghdad, in a most fundamental way.
Most immediately relevant to the concerns expressed in
Faysal is al-Ghazali’s critique of the scholarly culture that had
developed among the ‘ulama’. In the [hya’, he castigated those
he referred to as the ‘scholars of worldly gain (‘ulama’
al-dunya)’ and the ‘scholars of iniquity (‘ulama’ al-si’)’. These
were scholars who used their religious knowledge as a means to
social domination and worldly gain, as opposed to its intended
purpose of promoting God-consciousness and a concern with
the Hereafter.** While initially limited to a minority, this
mentality had grown to infect the entire religious establishment,
which was tragically sliding into an abyss of egotistical one-
upmanship. Now, almost as a matter of survival, a scholar’s aim
had to be to silence his adversaries and sustain his own
superiority. And in his pursuit thereof he could spare nothing,
including the use of forced and convoluted dialectics and
ad hominem diatribes. Even when he knew his opponent was
right, rather than acknowledge his error, the scholarly culture
dictated that he find a way to save face. Otherwise, he might be
looking at a life of juristic and intellectual desuetude. In his
classic study of Muslim education, Professor George Makdisi
describes the situation as follows:
38 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

A Muslim scholar...could not hope for the time when he could

receive the doctoral degree and thus come to the end of his struggle
to the top. He had to prove himself at every turn. To have a
successful academic career, he had first to rise to the top and then
maintain his position there. His situation was similar to the gunman
in the American films called ‘Westerns’ who was a target for all
newcomers aspiring to his position; or to the champion boxer, who
was to defend his title against all contenders. And this he did in the
arena of disputation.

Al-Ghazali’s critique confirms Professor Makdisi’s portrayal

and adds a socio-economic dimension. According to al-Ghazali,
ambitious minds flocked to the religious sciences because this
was the most effective means to social status, power, and the
largesse of the rich. At one point, for example, he complains
that the surfeited concentration on jurisprudence—especially
dialectics and the more ‘exotic’ aspects of the law—had resulted
in a critical shortage of Muslim medical doctors. This was
despite the fact that, according to the religious law itself, there
was a communal obligation (fard kifaya) to maintain the needed
number of Muslim doctors. Yet, al-Ghazali points out, none of
the religious scholars spoke out against this imbalance. And the
reason for this was as obvious as it was lamentable.

How many towns are there that are devoid of Muslim doctors,
while it is not permissible to accept the expert testimony of non-
Muslims in cases involving the religious law. Yet, we do not see
anyone devoting himself to the study of medicine. Instead, they fall
over each other in pursuit of jurisprudence, especially dialectics
and the art of disputation, despite the fact that there is an abundance
of jurists who can issue legal opinions and address the issues of the
day. I wish I knew how the jurists could sanction the undertaking
of communal obligations that are already being met to the neglect
of communal obligations that are not being met. Is there any reason
for this other than the fact that the study of medicine does not
provide easy access to executorships of religious endowments,
bequests and estates of orphans or to judgeships, government
positions, superiority over one’s peers and power over one’s
enemies?”
 INTRODUCTION: PART. TWO 39

Al-Ghazali’s disillusionment with the culture of the ‘ulama’

was part of the reason he left Baghdad to begin with. This
critical predisposition would remain with him throughout his
self-imposed exile and follow him back to Nishapur. There, one
last time, he would return to the classroom and, alas, to young
and inexperienced minds drunk with dreams of clerical super-
stardom and armed with inherited and unqualified categories of
exclusion with which to promote their cause. As we shall see,
the ease and frequency with which scholars and their disciples
hurled around charges of Unbelief would consume the bulk of
al-Ghazali’s attention in Faysal. This, by far, would form the
most critical dimension of the immediate context in which that
work was written.
Generally speaking, the importance of the /hya’ to a proper
reading of Faysal has not been recognized, and when it has it
has been read as a work on theology or mysticism, and its
public intellectual side has been ignored. I. Bello, for example,
ignores the Jhya’ and holds Faysal to have been primarily a
legal work ‘that explains the grounds on which someone, or
more specifically the philosophers, should be charged with
heresy’.°?! W.M. Watt, who recognizes the importance of the
Ihya’, says that Faysal was a work on ‘dogmatic theology’ that
was ‘partly directed against the Batiniya, but is mainly a defence
of his [al-Ghazali’s] own views on the extent to which ta’wil is
justified, and on the relative places of tawatur and idjma
‘as sources of religious knowledge’.” R. Frank sees Faysal as
an apologetic for al-Ghazali’s rejection of kalam, specifically
Ash‘arism, in favour of a ‘higher theology,’ which he introduced
in the /hya’ and whose legitimacy he sought to confirm in
Faysal, ‘not merely as a valid interpretation of the Koran and
Traditions, but as the intellectually most thorough and exact
conceptual exposition of their deeper meaning’.”
To my mind, these readings all fail to capture the most
important and driving element in Faysal, namely its ecumenical
mission. While it is true that the philosophers come in for severe
criticism, they take up only a few pages of Faysal. The Batiniya
are also criticized (and basically dismissed as buffoons), but
40 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

they too take up no more than a few pages. By comparison,

al-Ghazali’s criticisms of certain Sufi groups is much harsher
than that of the Batiniya. And his treatment of the excesses of
the mutakallimin is longer than his treatment of the Batiniya or
the philosophers. The same is true of the section on God-fearing
non-Muslims, especially Christians, in search of the truth. As
for Faysal’s primary aim being to defend al-Ghazali’s
theological idiosyncrasies, including his ‘higher theology’,™ the
brevity and generality of the work would hardly seem to support
this. Moreover, there is nothing in the ta’wil defended in Faysal
that is peculiarly Ghazalian; nor do al-Ghazali’s criticisms of
kalam necessitate a rejection of Ash‘arism;® nor is there any
explicit mention of ‘ilm al-mukashafa (higher theology”) in
Faysal, and ma ‘rifa (gnosis), its functional equivalent, is
mentioned only thrice (in the same section) in the entire work.
It is true that al-Ghazali implies that the way of the theologians
falls short of providing for a religiosity of true fulfilment. But
this could be found in writers as different from al-Ghazali as the
arch-Traditionalist Ibn Taymiya (d. 728/1328). At any rate, this
is hardly the main target of Faysal. In sum, there is little concrete
evidence in Faysal to suggest that it is primarily a defence of
al-Ghazali. On the contrary, Faysal was an attempt to defend
the community against a veritable cyclone of charges and
counter-charges of Unbelief.
This ecumenical dimension of Faysal, while escaping the
attention of contemporary scholars, did catch the eye of Ignaz
Goldziher almost a century ago. At that time Goldziher described
Faysal as ‘a special work on the idea of tolerance’.

In it he [al-Ghazali] proclaims to the world of Islam the view that

agreement on the fundamental principles of religion is the basis for
recognizing persons as believers, and that differences on matters of
dogma and ritual, even if it involves the rejection of the caliphate
recognized in Sunni Islam and consequently the Shi‘ite schism,
does not provide grounds for excommunication.”

To my mind, this is the only reading to which a close and

careful analysis of Faysal will inevitably lead. Indeed, on such
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 41

an analysis, it is difficult, al-Ghazali’s admitedly numerous

digressions notwithstanding, to miss this central thrust and
preoccupation of Faysal.

2. ‘ABD AL-QAHIR AL-BAGHDADI

Perhaps al-Ghazali’s concern with intolerance in Faysal was

obscured by the lack of any mention therein of individuals whose |
activities might have been the direct target of his effort. There
is, however, at least one figure from Sth/11th century Baghdad
who stands out for special consideration in this regard. This was
the Shafi‘i-Ash‘arite jurist, theologian and heresiographer, ‘Abd
al-Qahir al-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037). Al-Baghdadi had written
two important works, one on theology, Usul al-din (Principles
of the Religion), the other on heresiology, al-Farg bayna al-firaq
(The Differences Between the Sects). As a prominent figure
among both Ash‘arites and Shafi‘is, al-Baghdadi’s works would
exert an enormous influence upon both groups—especially up-
and-coming hopefuls looking to prove themselves. At the same
time, the period between his death and al-Ghazali’s coming to
Baghdad in 484/1091 was just enough time for al-Baghdadi’s
views to incubate en route to becoming a full-blown ideological
platform. With Baghdad as the political, cultural, and intellectual
capital of the Muslim world, al-Baghdadi’s influence was
destined to reach far and wide. And while there was nothing
new or, in and of itself, insidious about a scholar wielding this
kind of influence, serious problems would emerge from the fact
that al-Baghdadi happened to be an inveterate fanatic. He
recognized no such thing as material heresy,* and no one, save
those within his narrow circle of Ash‘arite ‘orthodoxy’, was
safe from the charge of Unbelief.
According to al-Baghdadi, it was ‘incumbent to condemn all
of the leaders of the Mu‘tazilites as Unbelievers’.”? The
Karramiya were Unbelievers because, according to al-Baghdadi,
they believed that God reconstitutes our bodies at Resurrection,
42 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

rather than resurrect us in the bodies we inhabit now.!”

Furthermore,

none of those who differ with us [Ash‘arites], including the

Qadarites, the Kharijites, the Rafidites, the Jahmites, the Najjarites
and the Corporealists (jismiya) [often a code-name for
Traditionalists] can be said to have committed a single act of
obedience to God, because the object of their alleged obedience is
not our God.!”!

Interestingly, this same argument was pressed by the Ash‘arite

turned Mu‘tazilite contemporary of al-Baghdadi, al-Qadi ‘Abd
al-Jabbar.'°? Meanwhile, the Mu‘tazilite al-Jubba’i (d. 303/915)
had defined obedience as ‘following the will of another’. This
implied, according to al-Baghdadi, that when God answers the
prayer of a servant, He obeys the latter. Al-Jubba’i was thus
guilty of Unbelief.!°? Even those who held correct beliefs but
were not sure that they could successfully defend them against
rational attack were subject, according to al-Baghdadi, to being
condemned as Unbelievers.'* And the list went on and on.
Besides the rigidity and lack of consideration with which
al-Baghdadi applies his theological litmus test, there is another
aspect to his approach that becomes a pivotal point for
al-Ghazali in Faysal. Some of the people al-Baghdadi
condemned as Unbelievers were not the least guilty of having
questioned or rejected any basic tenet of Islam or even a single
text of the Qur’an or Sunna. They had simply embraced rational
doctrines (perhaps on a secondary or even a tertiary matter)
that, in al-Baghdadi’s view, led to a wrong conclusion or
threatened the integrity of the Rationalist system as a whole.
For example, al-Asamm (d. 200-1/816-18) was condemned as
an Unbeliever because he did not believe in (philosophical)
accidents (a ‘rad/s. ‘arad).'°° Clearly, this was not an ‘issue
connected with his acceptance of Qur’an or Sunna, and it
reflected nothing at all about al-Asamm’s attitude towards God
or revelation. Yet al-Baghdadi saw it as ample grounds for
condemning al-Asamm as an Unbeliever.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 43

Al-Baghdadi cites all of these judgements in the name of

‘our scholars (ashabuna)’. At first blush, it is not clear whether
he is referring to Ash‘arites or Shafi‘is or both. His inclusion
under this designation, however, of the Maliki al-Baqillani
(d. 403/1013) clearly indicates that the reference is to
Ash‘arites.'°° Given, however, the relationship between
Ash‘arism and Shafi‘ism (the Shafi‘i school had traditionally
been home to the leading Ash‘arites!°’), these views probably
spread throughout Shafi‘i circles, where they approached the
status of school doctrine. Al-Ghazali, meanwhile, had almost
certainly read al-Baghdadi’s works; we know, for instance, that
he relied on al-Farg bayna al-firag for his Fada’ih al-batiniya
(Scandals of the Batinites).'!°* But as a Shafi‘i and an Ash‘arite
student and teacher, al-Ghazali probably also came into direct
contact with the effects of al-Baghdadi’s views, particularly upon
young people, first in Baghdad!” and then upon his return to
Nishapur. Meanwhile, especially in Baghdad, there was the
_ Traditionalist response to all of this, the ferocity of which is
reflected in the staunchly Traditionalist content and repeated
public readings of the state-sponsored Qadiri Creed, the
signatories to which declared: ‘This is the profession of faith of
the Muslims; he who is opposed to it is a transgressor of the law
and an infidel.’!!° For his part, al-Ghazali would be more
intimately connected to and thus more psychologically disturbed
by the excesses of Rationalism, aspects of which he himself
would have to struggle to overcome. This goes a long way to
explaining why it is primarily the extremism of Rationalists that
he portrays in Faysal and why Rationalists occupy the bulk of
his attention throughout that work.

B. FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA

There are actually two targets in Faysal, one primary, the other
secondary. The primary target is the extremists, who refuse to
recognize any theological interpretation other than their own.
The secondary target is the Crypto-infidels (zandadiqa/s. zindiq),
44 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

who hide behind figurative interpretation (ta’wil) in order to

conceal their opposition to the religion of the Prophet. Since,
according to al-Ghazali, figurative interpretation plays a role in
the theology of every group, there must be a criterion to
distinguish those figurative interpretations that should be
accorded recognition from those that should be exposed as
attempts to conceal Unbelief. .This is the purpose of Faysal,
whence its title, The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam
from Masked Infidelity. Against the extremists, al-Ghazali will
argue that the domain of acceptable theological interpretation is
much broader than they allow. Against the Crypto-infidels,
however, he will maintain that it is not broad enough to cover
their machinations. In the end, the argument against the Crypto-
infidels is really for the purpose of establishing the outer limits
of his criterion for acceptable belief. It is not a part of a direct
and sustained campaign against deistic and atheistic philosophers —
(al-falasifa) per se.

1. THE EXTREMISTS

Faysal opens with a question, presumably from a student, about

the propriety of the charge—apparently levelled by another
student—that al-Ghazali has written works that contradict the
doctrine of the master-theologians, particularly those of the
Ash‘arite school, and that to go against that school, even in the
smallest of details, is an act of Unbelief (kufr). Al-Ghazali
responds that there is nothing new in this use of kufr as a
category of exclusion to silence and discredit people; indeed,
the Prophet Muhammad was himself ridiculed and dismissed as
a common madman. In addition, however, al-Ghazali counsels
against investing these charges with any credence because they
issue from people who are steeped in envy and the pursuit of
worldly gain, people

whose god (i/ah) is their undisciplined passions (hawa), whose

object of worship (ma ‘biid) is their leaders, whose direction of
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 45

prayer (qibla) is the dinar, whose religious law is their own frivolity,
whose will (irada) is the promotion of reputation and carnal
pleasures, whose worship (‘ibada) is the service they render the
rich among them, whose remembrance (of God) is the devilish
whisperings of their own souls...

In reality, the young man who brought forth this charge was
neither a seeker of truth nor a protector thereof; he was merely
an overzealous, sophomoric sycophant who equated knowledge
with the ability to parrot views picked up and swallowed whole
at lectures and disputation sessions. Egotistical and demophobic,
he was a typical product of the culture that al-Ghazali had so
strongly criticized in the [hya’.
As al-Ghazali proceeds to answer the question more directly,
it is clear that his response is informed by the absence of an
ecclesiastical hierarchy. He begins by asking why this young
man, or the Ash‘arites, should enjoy a monopoly over the truth
such that their claims against their adversaries should have any
more validity than those of their adversaries against them. If the
Ash‘arites can brand the Hanbalites or the Mu‘tazilites as
Unbelievers, why should this privilege be denied to the latter
against the Ash‘arites? And why should the Ash‘arites be any
more justified in branding the likes of al-Baqillani an Unbeliever
because of his position on God’s possessing the attribute of
eternity than the latter would be in branding the Ash‘arites
Unbelievers for their position on that question. This latter line
of questioning, incidentally, was actually part of a divide-and-
conquer strategy on al-Ghazali’s part. For al-Baqillani had been
a master speculative theologian, reportedly a pupil of al-Ash‘ari
himself, who was held in high esteem in the Ash‘arite school.
And while he differed with the Ash‘arites on whether eternity
was an attribute added to or inherent in God’s essence, even the
likes of al-Baghdadi would acknowledge him as ‘one of our
[Ash‘arite] scholars (ashabuna)’. But if al-Baqillani could
escape condemnation for going against the Ash‘arites, why
should this be denied to others, including Mu‘tazilites and
Hanbalites? Why, for example, should the Mu'‘tazilites be
46 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

condemned as Unbelievers for denying the divine attributes such

as knowledge or power, while fully acknowledging that ‘God is
knowing and has knowledge of all things, and that He is powerful
and has power over all possibilities?’ Was not their position on
these attributes in effect the same as that of al-Baqillani on the
attribute of eternity? Unfortunately, al-Ghazali intimates, this habit
of appealing to double standards was common among theologians
of his time.!!! And in their zeal to press their cause, some of them
actually ended up in greater error than those they sought to
condemn. Thus, al-Ghazali admonishes,

If you are fair, you will probably know that one who gives any
particular thinker a monopoly over the truth is himself closer to
being guilty of Unbelief...because he puts this thinker in the position
of the Prophet, who alone is exempt from committing errors (in
doctrine) and through whom alone faith (iman) obtains by agreeing
with him and Unbelief (Aur) obtains by disagreeing with him.

After exposing the biased and arbitrary nature of the various

charges and counter-charges of Unbelief, al-Ghazali invites his
interlocutor to consider his criterion for Unbelief. He indicates
that neither time nor space will allow him to provide a full
explication but that, even in its adumbrated form, this definition
should suffice as

a means of avoiding the error of condemning various groups as

Unbelievers and of casting aspersions on the people of Islam—however
much their ways may differ—while they hold fast to the statement,
‘There is no god but God; Muhammad is His messenger,’ being sincere
therein and not categorically contradicting it in any way.

Unbelief (kufr), according to al-Ghazali, is ‘to deem anything

the Prophet brought to be a lie,’ just as faith (iman) is ‘to deem
everything he brought to be true.’ On this definition, Jews and
Christians are Unbelievers because they deem one or more of
the prophets to be a liar. Atheists, meanwhile, along with Deists,
Dualists, Associationists, and Crypto-Infidels, are Unbelievers
on a fortiori grounds. As applied to Muslims, this criterion
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 47

would be qualified by the stipulation that this ‘deeming to be a

lie’ be in connection with one of the fundamental principles
(usul) of the Faith. These, according to al-Ghazali, are three:
1) the existence and oneness of God; 2) the prophethood of the
Prophet Muhammad; and 3) the reality of the Last Day. While
this stipulation is not actually introduced until more than halfway
through Faysal, thematically it constitutes al-Ghazali’s first line
of defence. For, according to al-Ghazali, everything besides
these three fundamentals is secondary and cannot, as such, be
taken as a basis for passing a judgement of Unbelief. In his
words, ‘there should be no branding any person an Unbeliever
over any secondary issue whatsoever, as a matter of principle.’
Among these secondary issues al-Ghazali includes such things
as some of the far-fetched interpretations of the Batinites or the
Twelver Shi‘ite doctrine on the Imamate. On al-Ghaziali’s
depiction, some of the interpretations of the Batinites border on
the psychedelic. Even so, he insists, as long as these are not
connected with a fundamental of creed, they cannot be taken as
a basis for condemning them as Unbelievers. Similarly, the
Twelver Shi‘ite doctrine on the Imamate might be silly, even
heinous, but it does not involve accusing the Prophet of lying,
nor is it connected with any of the fundamentals of the Faith.
As such, it cannot be taken as a basis for charging Twelver
Shi‘ites with Unbelief.
Al-Ghazali notes that there is one exception to this rule. This
involves secondary beliefs that have been handed down from
the Prophet via diffuse congruence or tawatur. Tawatur is a
modality of transmitting reports from the past via so many
different channels that it is inconceivable that those transmitting
them could be mistaken or could have colluded to perpetrate an
act of intentional deception. Examples of tawdatur are reflected
in our knowledge of distant places, such as China or Australia,
or, according to Muslim tradition, the entire text of the Qur’an.
Now, al-Ghazali’s point in adding this exception is that tawatur
virtually guarantees the integrity of a report.'’? Assuch, if a
statement is related on the authority of the Prophet via tawdtur,
one can only conclude that the Prophet actually made it. Thus,
48 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

to reject such a report, or to deem its contents to be false, would

be in effect to reject the authority of the Prophet or to deem him
to have lied. In other words, the justification for passing a
judgement of Unbelief regarding a secondary doctrine that has
been transmitted via tawatur is not that the person so judged
has erred on that secondary issue per se, but that he has
effectively rejected the Prophet or accused him of delivering
lies. Examples of this would be to deny that the Ka‘ba at Mecca
is actually the House of God towards which the Prophet turned
in prayer and to which he made the pilgrimage, or that ‘A’isha
was innocent of the charges of adultery made against her,
following her exoneration by the Qur’an.
Having said this much, al-Ghazali moves quickly to pre-empt
any abuse of this exception and to reinforce the limits of what it
actually allows by stating explicitly that secondary beliefs
transmitted via isolated (ahdadi) reports (i.e., reports whose
transmission does not meet the definition of tawatur) cannot be
taken as a basis for passing judgements of Unbelief. They may
be a cause for charging a person with unsanctioned innovation
(bid ‘a)—but only if the views he espouses threaten to confuse
the minds of the masses or to lead to public disorder. Other than
this, however, errors regarding secondary doctrines handed down
through isolated reports should simply be pointed out and
corrected without prejudice.
Related to the issue of secondary doctrines handed down via
tawatur is that of secondary beliefs that are backed by
unanimous consensus (ijma‘). Here al-Ghazali is a bit less
explicit. What he seems to be saying, however, is that, in theory,
error or intentional flouting of such beliefs could be a basis for
a judgement of Unbelief. In practice, however, ijm@’ is itself so
fraught with controversy and ambiguity that it would be difficult
to commit wholeheartedly to such a judgement. For, on the one
hand, he notes, some scholars, such as al-Nazzam (d. ca. 220-
230/835-45) (and one could add others, like Ibn Hazm (d. 456/
1063) denied that ijima was even an authoritative source.!!3 On
the other hand, scholars like Abi Bakr al-Farisi (?d. 305/922),
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 49

who recognized ijma’, were known to have made claims of

consensus for which they were either criticized or contradicted.
Again, this minimalist criterion for being considered a Muslim
was al-Ghazali’s first line of defence against the extremists. In
reality, however, he understood that these were precarious
fortifications, given the ease with which the charge of deeming
the Prophet to be a liar, even on a secondary issue transmitted
via isolated reports, could be conflated with a denial of his
prophethood altogether—a primary issue indeed. On this
recognition, the bulk of al-Ghazali’s attention would be devoted
to refuting the theologians’ charges and counter-charges of
deeming the Prophet to have lied, period, by showing that these
charges were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of
‘deeming to be a lie’, and hence a misapplication of the
definition of kufr.
According to al-Ghazali, all the schools grounded their charge
of Unbelief against the others in the accusation that the latter
had contradicted the statement, ‘There is no god but God;
Muhammad is His messenger.’ This was effected through their
having deemed the Prophet to have delivered lies. When the
Ash‘arite denied the possibility of God’s mounting the Throne,
the Traditionalist-Hanbalite accused him of implying that the
Prophet lied when he stated in the Qur’an, ‘The Merciful
mounted the Throne (al-rahman ‘ala al-arsh istawa)’. When
the Hanbalite insisted on the literal meaning of such verses, the
Ash‘arite accused him of implying that the Prophet lied when
he said, ‘Nothing is anything like Him (Jaysa ka mithlihi shay’),’
which the Ash‘arite took to be a blanket denial of anthropomor-
phism and the possibility of accidents, such as motion, inhering
in the divine. The Ash‘arite accuses the Mu‘tazilite of implying
that the Prophet lied when he spoke of the divine attributes,
which the Mu‘tazilite denies. The Mu‘tazilite, meanwhile,
accuses the Ash‘arite of implying that the Prophet lied when he
taught of monotheism (tawhid), since any divine attributes would
have to be co-eternal with God, which would result in a
multiplicity of eternals. Ultimately, according to al-Ghazali, all
of these charges revolved around each group’s understanding of
50 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

what it meant to deem a statement to be false (takdhib) and

what it meant to deem it to be true (tasdiq). His aim, therefore,
would be to explain takdhib and tasdig in a way that pre-empted
this otherwise inevitable conflict.
To deem a statement to be a lie is to deny that it is true. To
deem a statement to be true, however, according to al-Ghazali,
is merely to acknowledge the existence (wujid) of its referent.
Existence, meanwhile, can be perceived (and thus
acknowledged) on five levels: 1) ontological (dhati); 2) sensory
(hissi); 3) conceptual (khayali); 4) noetic (‘agli); and
5) analogous (shabahi). According to al-Ghazali, it is only
because of their obliviousness to this fact of multiple levels of
perception that the various groups persist in accusing each other
of deeming the Prophet to have lied. After establishing,
therefore, that these five levels are not his invention but are
recognized, willy-nilly, throughout the community, al-Ghazali
announces his solution to the problem.

Know that everyone who interprets a statement of the Lawgiver in

accordance with one of the preceding levels (of existence) has
deemed such statements to be true. ‘Deeming a statement to be a
lie (takdhib),’ on the other hand, is to deny its correspondence to
any of these levels and to claim that it represents no reality at all,
that it is a pure lie, and that the Lawgiver’s aim in delivering it was
simply to deceive people or to promote the (putative) common
good (maslaha). This is pure Unbelief (kufr) and masked infidelity
(zandaqa). Other than this, however, it is improper to brand as an
Unbeliever anyone who engages in figurative interpretation, as long
as he observes the Rule of Figurative Interpretation (Qaniun
al-ta’wil)...

The five levels of existence correspond to a descending

hierarchy of literalness, with ontological (dhati) being literal in
the strict sense, sensory (hissi) representing the first level of
figurative existence, and analogous (shabahi) representing the
most remote. When interpreting statements of the Prophet, one
must begin with the ontological level. If the statement can be
sustained as true on that level one cannot move to a level of
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO at

figurative existence. If, however, the statement cannot be

sustained on the ontological level, one must move to the most
proximate level of figurative existence. Only if the statement
cannot be sustained on the more proximate level can one move
to a more remote level of figurative existence. This is what
al-Ghazali refers to as the Rule of Figurative Interpretation
(Qaniun al-ta’wil), i.e., that one can move to a lower level of
existence only if a Prophetic statement proves to be
unsustainable on the higher level.
In the interest of space, one example of how this system
works will have to serve.''* As mentioned, the first level of
figurative existence is the sensory (hissi) level. The difference
between sensory existence and ontological existence is that a
thing may appear to the senses in one way whereas its
ontological reality is different, or it may not exist ontologically
at all. For example, on the level of the senses, the sun appears
to rise and set and to revolve around the earth. In reality,
however, the sun neither rises nor sets nor revolves around the
earth. Al-Ghazali’s point is that, speaking from the perspective
of the senses, a person would be justified in deeming a statement
to the effect that the sun rises or sets to be true. Ontologically
speaking, however, such a statement would be deemed false.
On this understanding, a person who knows nothing about
astronomy might deem—in fact, must deem, according to
al-Ghazali—a verse like, ‘And you see the sun when it rises
scale the right side of their cave, and when it sets it spikes them
on their left,’ (18:17) to be literally (i.e., ontologically) true.
One versed in astronomy, on the other hand, would be justified
in deeming this verse to be literally false and only sensorily
true. Since, however, neither party denies the truth of the verse
on all levels or without justification, neither can be charged
with deeming the Prophet to have lied.
At bottom, this approach reflected al-Ghazali’s recognition
that interpretation consists of two parts: 1) the statement to be
interpreted and; 2) a psychological prism or set of presupposi-
tions against which the statement must be made to ‘make sense’.
If, on these presuppositions, a literal interpretation makes sense,
52 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

the interpreter will stop there (unless he has other reasons for
wanting to avoid such an interpretation). If, on the other hand, a
literal interpretation does not make sense, the interpreter will
search for ways of bringing the statement into conformity with
this basic desideratum. Based on this observation, al-Ghazali
insists that the real contention between the theological schools
is not over any difference in their respective levels of
cominitment to scripture, but rather over what each recognizes
and accepts as a justification for moving from one level of
interpretation to the next. This is the very heart of al-Ghazali’s
system, which is supported by two main contentions.
First, al-Ghazali refutes the notion that the difference between
Traditionalism and Rationalism is that the latter accepts and
engages in figurative interpretation (ta’wil) while the former
refuses to do so, restricting itself in all cases to the literal
meaning of scripture. According to al-Ghazali, the real
difference between these two approaches is one of degree, not
kind. In this regard, he points out that even Imam Ahmad
b. Hanbal, the man most notoriously and adamantly opposed to
figurative interpretation, resorted to ta’wil in his interpretation
of a number of hadith. For example, he did not take the Black
Stone to be literally the right hand of God; nor did he hold to a
literal understanding of ‘the two fingers of the All-Merciful’
between which the heart of the Believer is said to rest. It is true,
and al-Ghazali makes no attempt to hide it, that Imam Ahmad
rarely resorted to, ta’wil. But this, according to al-Ghazali, was
only because he rarely saw any need or justification for doing so.
This brings us to the second contention. According to
al-Ghazali, the reason that Imam Ahmad rarely saw any need or
justification for resorting to figurative interpretation had less to
do with any connection in his mind between literalness and
truth per se than it did with the interpretive presuppositions
with which he approached revelation. In other words, Imam
Ahmad was simply not exposed, or did not subscribe, to the
Aristotelian-Neoplatonic-inspired tradition of speculative:
rationalism (a/-nazar al-‘aqli). As a result, he did not labour
under its presuppositions. Had Imam Ahmad been versed in that
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 3

tradition, the logical impossibility of many other reports, such

as those implying God’s aboveness, would have appeared to
him and prompted him to resort more often to ta’wil. Imam
Ahmad’s difference with the mutakallimiin, in other words, is
again one of degree, not kind. And in this context, Traditionalism
and Rationalism can be seen to be, in effect, different
applications of one and the same approach.
Now, al-Ghazali’s aim is not to defend one set of
presuppositions over any other, such that ta’wil emerges as a
more or less frequent and justifiable option. His aim is merely
to point out that the presence or absence of a particular set of
presuppositions is, ceteris paribus, an accident of history that
has nothing to do with one’s level of religious commitment. To
al-Ghazali’s mind, it was just as natural for any of his
contemporaries to be possessed of (‘Islamicized’) Aristotelian-
Neoplatonic presuppositions as it would be for anyone today to
have a basic knowledge of astronomy. At the same time,
however, just as many people in our time may not have access
to quality education or may harbour misgivings towards science
as the perceived agent and handiwork of their oppressors, so
might people in his day be oblivious or negatively predisposed
to the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition. To be sure, these
differential endowments would lead inevitably to differences in
interpretation. In the end, however, one might be no more
justified in condemning a Rationalist or a Traditionalist
interpretation than one would be in condemning either party in
the aforementioned example of the sun rising and setting.
Again, this is not to claim immunity for all presuppositions
or the interpretations to which they lead. It is merely to point
out that the real focal point of any inquiry into a person’s faith
must be their ‘attitude’ or predisposition toward God and
revelation, not their acumen in the highly sophisticated enterprise
of theological interpretation. A stupid, uneducated, or even
overly cerebral person who loves God and approaches scripture
in a spirit of complete resignation may emerge with crude,
counter-intuitive, or outlandish theological interpretations. But
these would appear so only to those who do not share their
54 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

interpretive presuppositions. And in such circumstances, the

attempt to invoke tradition as impartial judge—i.e., in its
capacity as heir to sacred cum presuppositionless time—cannot,
as we have seen, conceal the fact that the mechanism via which
tradition itself remains tradition is indebted to a set of presup-
positions.''S In the end, there simply are no presuppositionless
interpretations. Moreover, stupidity and ignorance are no more
synonymous with Unbelief than intelligence and education are
with faith. A person’s faith simply cannot be judged solely on
the basis of his or her theological interpretations. Certainly the
mere act of engaging in or refusing to engage in tawil cannot
provide an adequate basis for a judgement of Unbelief.
Ultimately, al-Ghazali’s position presages the one later echoed
by the redoubtable Traditionalist Ibn Taymiya, who also had
deep ecumenical concerns and who insisted that, in addition to
the content of a doctrine, the attitude of its advocate was material
in substantiating a charge of Unbelief, a fact unfortunately lost,
according to him, on many of the ‘ulama’. According to
Ibn Taymiya,

Many of those who discuss issues of faith and Unbelief in order to

condemn the people of undisciplined passions (ah/l al-ahwa’) as
Unbelievers are not mindful of this principle, and they do not
distinguish between what appears to be a person’s status and what
actually is their status (al-hukm al-zahir wa al-batin), despite the
fact that the difference between the two is well established by
many diffusely congruent (mutawatir) reports and known consensus.
In fact, this is known a priori to be part of the religion of Islam.
And anyone who considers this carefully will know that many of
the people of undisciplined passions and unsanctioned innovations
(bida ‘/s. bid‘a) may be ignorant, wrong-minded Believers who have
simply veered away from some aspect of what the Prophet brought
(mu’min mukhti’ jahil dall ‘an ba‘d ma ja’a bihi al-rasiil), just as
they may be Hypocrites and Crypto-infidels who pretend to be
other than what they are.!!®

One should not understand from all of this that al-Ghazali is

secretly committed to a.theology of fallibism or esoteric
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 55

subjectivism. Al-Ghazali is not saying that there is no such

thing as absolute truth, nor that truth is purely a matter of
perspective. In fact, one of the main points of Faysal is that,
while presuppositions may initially inform all interpretations,
there is a fundamental distinction between presuppositions and
logical proof (burhan). The licence to engage in figurative
interpretation, moreover, or to move from one level of existence
to the next, is not granted simply on the recognition of the
inevitable presence and role of presuppositions. Rather, this
requires logical proof! What al-Ghazali advocates, therefore, is
that the theologians come together and subject all presup-
positions to critical examination and accord recognition only to
those that meet their mutually agreed-upon standard of logical
proof. He nominates his own works al-Qistas al-mustagqim and
Mihakk al-nazar as blueprints, or perhaps starting points, in this
regard. Of course, al-Ghazali suffered no delusions about the
real possibilities of such an ecumenical event. In the absence
thereof, therefore, his two-tiered ‘Decisive Criterion’ would be
there to stave off the ad infinitum charges of Unbelief.

2. THE CRYPTO-INFIDELS

The first tier of al-Ghazali’s minimalist criterion for considering

a person a Muslim would ostensibly insulate the majority of
theologians from charges of Unbelief. The second tier, wherein
he explicates the true meaning of takdhib and tasdiq, would
supply additional insulation for secondary issues. This two-tiered
system would have the opposite effect, however, on a group
collectively identified as ‘al-zandadiqa/s. zindiq’. For the
zanadiqa, according to al-Ghazali, proffered interpretations that
went beyond the five levels of existence and, more importantly,
compromised the literal meaning of fundamental tenets of Faith.
For al-Ghazali, however, the problem was not simply that the
zanadiga went beyond the boundaries of acceptable ta wil (i.e.,
on the basis of well-intentioned, honest mistakes); the problem
was that they sought to immunize what they knew to contradict
56 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

the basic teachings of Islam by appealing to the method of

ta’wil. This, according to al-Ghazali, was nothing more than a
facile attempt to conceal their rejection of the religion of the
Prophet. Thus, their appeals to figurative interpretation
notwithstanding, he charged them flat out with Unbelief.
Contrary to what has been commonly assumed, al-Ghazali’s
target in attacking the zanadiqa was neither ‘godlessness’,
‘heresy’, or even ‘unbelief? in and of themselves. Al-Ghazali
was not interested in atheists who proclaimed their atheism
outright; nor was he particularly perturbed by ‘simple heresies’
such as Mu‘tazilism; nor would he have included a schism like
Sikhism, as long as the latter identified itself as a separate
religion. Al-Ghazali’s concern was rather with Unbelief that
attempted to pass itself off as falling within the boundaries of
Islam. He used the term zanddiqa to refer not simply to heretics,
or even atheists, but to ‘Crypto-infidels,’ which is why I translate
zandaqa (the verbal noun) as ‘masked infidelity’. Indeed, its
flare and flashiness notwithstanding, Faysal’s title was both
calculated and precise: The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing
Islam, i.e., acceptable interpretation, from Masked Infidelity,
i.e., the attempt to conceal Unbelief in figurative interpretation.
While this rendering of zindig (and zandaqa) diverges from
common renderings, there is nothing idiosyncratic in
al-Ghazali’s use of the term. In fact, his use is consistent with
what has been identified as the original Persian meaning of the
word (and we might recall that al-Ghazali was a Persian who
even wrote scholarly works in the language'!’). According to
J. Choksy, zindiq was the Arabicized version of zandig, which
in Pahlavi meant ‘one who distorts exegesis’.''® S$. Shaked notes
that the term was largely applied to Manichaeans, ‘because of
their “twisted” exegesis of the Avesta (Zand)’.'! In early
Abbasid times, the term was applied to those who violated the
strict monotheism of Islam and were suspected of Manichaean
dualist tendencies, most particularly, belief in the doctrine of
the duality of eternals.'!*° This underlying connotation of
duplicity is hinted at in Ahmad Ibn Hanbal’s use of the word in
his al-Radd ‘ala al-zanadiga wa al-jahmiya. The Hanbalite Ibn
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 57

Qudama (d. 620/1223) would later state explicitly that ‘the

meaning of zandaqa is to make an outward show of belief in the
true religion while inwardly adhering to its contrary.’!2! He would
add that ‘this religious hypocrisy used to be referred to as nifag in
the days of the Apostle of God; but today it is called zandaqa.’!”
This would all be confirmed by Ibn Taymiya, who says that most
of the fugaha’ use the term as a synonym for hypocrisy (nifaq),
or making a show of Islam in order to conceal Unbelief.!73
In concrete terms, the zanadiga to whom al-Ghazali refers
are primarily the philosophers (al-falasifa), i.e., the Muslim heirs
to the Neoplatonic system such as Ibn Sina and his ilk. Again,
al-Ghazali’s case against them is that they cast aspersions on
the literal meaning of fundamental tenets, such as the
resurrection of the body, sentient punishment in the Hereafter,
and God’s knowledge of particulars, without any logical proof
to substantiate this. According to al-Ghazali’s Rule of Figurative
Interpretation, this lack of logical proof rendered their move to
non-literal interpretation inadmissible. Moreover, their
persistence in proffering these non-literal interpretations in the
absence of such proof was proof that they did not really believe
in these tenets and were only feigning figurative interpretation
to make a show of belief. Thus, the philosophers become
al-Ghazali’s foil for demonstrating the limits of his system for
accommodating theological diversity among the fugaha’ and
the mutakallimiin. They fall just outside the boundaries of this
system, just inside of which al-Ghazali places the Mu‘tazilites.
In Faysal, al-Ghazali is surprisingly brief in his treatment of
the actual arguments of the falasifa.'** He does not discuss any
of their would-be proofs for rejecting the literal truth of the
fundamentals. He merely states that the Qur’an and Sunna are
too repetitive and too explicit to accommodate a non-literal
interpretation of these tenets. Moreover, he claims, the
philosophers admit that they believe that the Prophet lied. They
simply insist that, while the Prophet knowingly delivered
doctrines he knew to be untrue, the fact that he did so in order
to promote the putative common good, i.e., by giving people
something to believe in, exonerates him from any blame. Thus,
58 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

unlike the case among the fugaha’ and the mutakallimiin, it is

not al-Ghazali who is reading takdhib into the philosophers’
doctrines. Rather, according to him, the philosophers are guilty
of takdhib by their own admission.
Al-Ghazali actually speaks, however, of two levels of
zandaqa, which I interpret as atheism and deism, respectively.
Atheism, or what he terms zandaqa mutlaqa, denies
categorically that the universe has a Creator. Deism, or qualified
zandaqa, on the other hand, acknowledges the existence of a
Creator but denies those realities taught by the prophets such as
resurrection, Paradise, and Hell.
Al-Ghazali’s inclusion of the deists among the zandadiqa
underscores an important aspect of his campaign, namely that
his definitions are rooted in the perspective of revealed religion,
according to which precise or concrete information about God
and the Unseen are contingent upon God’s act of revelation
through the medium of prophets. On this understanding, one
cannot reject the messengers without rejecting the message itself;
for the messengership of the messengers is part and parcel of
the message. Now, one can believe in God or the Creator in
general without accepting the messengers. But such belief would
provide no basis for belief in such notions as Paradise and Hell
(not to mention specific duties such as prayer or fasting). Yet,
from the perspective of revealed religion, this is the whole point
of the matter, and al-Ghazali is quick to note that kufr is a legal
designation that is posited by scripture, its chief implication
being eternal damnation in Hell. In other words, al-Ghazali’s
definition of kufr is both precise and restrictive. Accordingly, a
person can believe in God in the ordinary sense but be an
Unbeliever in legal/scriptural terms, just as one can commit
theft or adultery in the ordinary sense but not in the legal/
scriptural sense.'*° The zanadiqa-deists, according to al-Ghazali,
are Unbelievers not because they do not believe in God, but
because they reject the truthfulness of the Prophet Muhammad.
It should be noted, however, that while al-Ghazali repeatedly
identifies the zanadiga with the philosophers in general, his
initial reference is to ‘most of the philosophers’. Al-Ghazali is
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 59

not opposed to philosophical activity in and of itself; in

fact, his
proposal to the jurists and theologians to construct an agreed-
upon criterion for ‘logical proof’ would require of them a
significant investment in philosophical activity, as his
recommendation of al-Qistas al-mustaqim and Mihakk al-nazar
clearly indicates. Similarly, al-Ghazali speaks openly on other
occasions of ‘falasifa who believe generally in God and the last
day’.'*° Among those believing philosophers he may have had
in mind is Abi al-Hasan Muhammad b. Yisuf al-‘Amiri
(d. 381/992), who, though virtually unknown in the West, is
ranked by al-Shahrastani alongside the giants Ibn Sina and
al-Farabi’?’? and whose Kitab al-i‘lam bi manaqib al-islam'?®
clearly shows him to have satisfied al-Ghazali’s decisive
criterion for Islam.

3. THE LIMITS OF REASON: THE CRITIQUE OF KALAM

In his autobiographical work, al-Mungqidh min al-dalal (believed

to be third to last work he wrote’”’), al-Ghazali recounts the
travails of his quest to find religious certainty and fulfilment.
The curriculum vitae he provides testifies to the confidence he
had initially placed in the power of reason and to the
assiduousness with which he had pursued the life of the mind.
Having devoted most of his life to law and the rational sciences,
however, al-Ghazali concedes in Mungqidh that he came to find
true fulfilment in the alogism of the Sufis.’° This waning
confidence in the panacean power of reason had already been
foreshadowed in Faysal, even as al-Ghazali continued in that
work to appeal to reason as the only means of avoiding
intolerance and fanaticism.
This apparently contradictory assessment of the role and value
of reason might appear at first blush to support the charge that
al-Ghazali held conflicting ideas which he was never able to
reconcile. Closer examination, however, reveals that, as he
approached the end of his life, al-Ghazali was far less dubious
about the power of reason per se than he was convinced of the
60 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

limits of its utility in the private versus the public domain.

Al-Ghazali had come to recognize that a person’s knowledge or
convictions were not the same as what he or she was able to
‘prove’ or explain. Reason, for its part, might play a role in
vindicating or explicating convictions, but it was virtually
irrelevant to their actual coming into existence. Reason might
be able to tell us that if we value A we must also accept B,
because A and B are inseparable; or it might tell us that we
cannot have both A and B because the two are mutually
exclusive; it may even teach us how to organize the realization
of our goals over time, whereby we deprive ourselves now in
order to reap more richly in the future. In the end, however, it
was not the mind (‘ag/) but the heart (qa/b) or self (nafs) that
determined our convictions and moved us to action.!?!
Ultimately, like post-Enlightenment philosophers from Hobbes
to the present, al-Ghazali embraced the view that reason was
neither self-directing nor self-motivated, but could operate only
in the interest of values or convictions already present, values
or convictions which reason itself could never fully get behind
and ‘push’ into place.'*?
On a personal level, however, the primary goal of religion is
precisely to promote and sustain motives and convictions that
engender a God-pleasing state of being and acting. While reason
may be of limited relevance to this essentially private enterprise,
it can be extremely useful as a referee in public exchanges,
precisely because it is devoid of any values of its own. Reason
can justify, defend, or apprehend convictions; it can even
deconstruct or reconcile them in accordance with agreed-upon
standards of acceptability. Moreover, since values are essentially
irrelevant to its constitution, reason is, ceteris paribus, equally
accessible to all. In the end, however, no matter how successful
one might be in the public enterprise of justifying or defending
one’s stated positions, the settling of true religious conviction in
one’s heart is not a necessary consequence. Failure to appreciate
this fact had plagued al-Ghazali throughout his early life. He was
now trying to pass on the benefits of this hard-earned realization
to his youthful interlocutor in Faysal.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 61

This is the real meaning behind al-Ghazali’s critique of kalam

in Faysal. As early as the Ihya’, he had insisted that speculative
rationalism was not the way to apprehending the truth nor to
acquiring true religious convictions. According to him, the only
real function of kalam was to defend the beliefs of the Muslims,
particularly against rational attack by the enemies of Islam.'
This same basic argument reappears in Faysal. Here, however,
al-Ghazali adds that, were he to put aside pretensions of political
correctness, he would declare outright that kalam is a forbidden
(haram) science, with only two exceptions: 1) a thinker who
develops doubts may use kalam to clear these up; 2) a scholar
may learn kalam in order to treat those who develop doubts or
to beat back the efforts of those who attack Islam.'* Again,
however, kalam’s usefulness in this essentially public capacity
was not to be confused with any ability on its part to promote
personal piety. Indeed, for all the learning and erudition they
displayed, the sessions of theological disputation rarely, if ever,
resulted in a conversion. On the contrary, al-Ghazali insists,
faith in God comes ‘of a light that God casts into the hearts of
His servants, as a gift and a gratuity from Him’. In fact, he
adds,

true faith (al-iman al-rasikh) is the faith of the masses that develops
in their hearts from childhood due to their constant exposure
(to religious material), or that accrues to them after they have
reached the age of majority as a result of experiences that they
cannot fully articulate.

At bottom, al-Ghazali’s case against kKalam was not simply

that it did not lead to truth in terms of the actual content of its
doctrines, but rather that kalam’s tendency was actually to
impede the realization of truth. In other words, by holding up
formal doctrine as a true and actual representation of God, kalam
ended up veiling people from God Himself. As one writer put it
(in another context), ‘When the creeds are accepted as correct
or orthodox almost immediately orthodox behaviour begins to
demand assent to the creeds rather than “yes” to the God to
62 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

whom the creeds point...’.'°5 Or, as another scholar summed it

up, ‘doctrines, however sophisticated they may be, are still
veils...’.°6 For al-Ghazali, the operative distinction in all of
this was between information, on the one hand, and realization,
on the other. Being informed has to do with receiving data,
which can be communicated through words alone. Realization,
on the other hand, accrues through experience. Its true medium
is life, and while it typically ‘changes’ the meanings of the
words used to impart information, it does so only in the sense of
stripping them of their abstractness and elasticity. The difference
between being informed and coming to a realization might be
likened to the difference between hearing the words, ‘I love
you,’ after one and after forty years of marriage. It is what
W. Chittick refers to as the difference between ‘hearing’ the
truth and ‘seeing’ it made manifest.'*’ Now, al-Ghazali fully
subscribes to the idea that concrete information about God and
the Unseen can only come through the medium of the prophets.
As such, what the mutakallimiin extract from revelation may
constitute valid data about God. But al-Ghazali does not believe
that imparting and receiving information is the sole or ultimate
goal of religion, or that being informed is as far as human
beings can or should go. Rather, the goal of religion is the
realization of the truth behind the information; for only this can
promote true religious motives and is the essence of true
religious conviction. This is what al-Ghazali refers to in Faysal
as “gnosis (ma ‘rifa),’ and this is what Professor Frank had in
mind when he spoke of al-Ghazali’s ‘higher theology’.'* Here
al-Ghazali’s alogism finds its clearest expression in all of Faysal.
And it is here that his atheological—or perhaps even anti-
theological—leanings are most apparent.

[I]f a person is constant in worship to the point that he attains true

God-consciousness (tagwa) and his soul is cleansed of the pollutants
of this transient life and he achieves unfailing consistency in the
remembrance of God, the light of gnosis (ma ‘rifa) will reveal itself
to him such that matters that had been blindly accepted on faith
become as if he sees and witnesses them (for himself). This is true
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 63

gnosis which obtains only after the fetters of formalized doctrine

are undone and the bosom is expanded by the light of God the
Exalted.

It should be noted that while al-Ghazali speaks here only of

‘religious experiences’ in the sense of those that obtain as a
result of concrete acts of worship, what he has in mind are
actually the cumulative experiences of life in general. This is
explicitly born out later in Mungidh, for example, where he
speaks of the means via which one comes to realize the truth of
the prophethood of Muhammad. There he states that this obtains
not by simply observing or receiving reliable reports of the
Prophet’s miracles, but by repeatedly observing the truths taught
by the Prophet manifest themselves in one’s life. It is by
experiencing, in other words, the truth of such Prophetic
teachings as, ‘Whoever acts on the basis of what they know,
God will grant them knowledge of what they do not know,’ or
“Whoever assists an evil-doer (zalim), God will (eventually)
turn the latter against them,’ that one comes to realize the truth
of the Prophet’s message.'*? Thus, al-Ghazali advises,

this is the means by which you should seek certainty of (a claim to)
prophethood, not by (a person’s) turning a staff into a snake or
splitting the moon. For when you observe the latter alone without
the benefit of extraneous corroborative indicators too numerous to
count, you may think that you are observing a feat of magic or a
phantasm or that this is simply a test from God via which He
intends to lead people astray. For, indeed, ‘He leads astray
whomsoever He wills and He guides whomsoever He wills.’'*°

To be sure, this realization, or gnosis, is a thoroughly private

affair that entails an inevitably subjective element; for no two
people experience the same things under the same circumstances
throughout their lives, nor does anyone outside the experience
itself have direct access to it. There is thus a potential danger,
particularly from the perspective of revealed religion, in
recognizing the value and transformative power of experience.
For, as far as revealed religion is concerned, experience is only
64 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

supposed to provide insights into the meaning and veracity of

revelation, not to take the place of revelation by effectively
becoming an independent source of information. As the
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich says of experience, ‘Its
productive power is restricted to the transformation of what is
given to it.’!4' Meanwhile, because those outside one’s
experience have no way of validating it, they have little
justification for sanctioning the transformations, amplifications,
or points of de-emphasis it may suggest. Thus, at the community
level (or in modern parlance, at the level of organized religion)
only those transformations that can be substantiated on the basis
of reason—to which everyone has ostensibly equal access—
will generally be recognized. For his part, al-Ghazali is clearly
aware of the liabilities connected with experience, as he is of
the latent tension between the religious individual and the
religious community. He makes no direct attempt in Faysal,
however, to overcome these difficulties. Perhaps this was his
way of signalling his belief that these were not difficulties that
could be overcome. These were simply inevitable facts of life
that, at best, could only be prudently managed.

4. THE LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE AND THE

BOUNDLESSNESS OF GOD’S MERCY

Having defined Unbelief as the act of deeming the Prophet to

be a liar, and having underscored the limitations of reason in the
process of coming to belief, towards the end of Faysal al-Ghazali
conducts an interesting discussion on the fate of those who have
not been exposed to authentic information about the Prophet
and/or whose experiences have not provided a basis upon which
to confirm his claims. This discussion follows his treatment of
the exclusivism of some of the mutakallimiin and is designed in
part both to highlight and counter their extremism. Beyond that,
however, al-Ghazali’s point seems to be that while experience,
like reason, is limited, whatever experiential deficits one might
suffer are compensated for by the boundlessness of God’s mercy.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 65

The discussion begins with the claim by a speculative

theologian to the effect that it is not the mutakallimin but the
Prophet who has restricted the number of people who will enter
Paradise. This is clearly supported by a number of hadith, e.g.,
‘My community will divide into seventy-odd sects, only one of
which will be saved.’ Al-Ghazali responds with a number of
counter-hadith and a series of rational proofs via which he argues
that phrases like ‘being saved’ and ‘contingent of Hell,’ as
appear in his interlocutor’s hadith, are not meant in the absolute.
‘Being saved’ refers, rather, in the first instance, to those whose
records are so pure that they enter Paradise without being
questioned about their deeds; it does not preclude the possibility
of entering Paradise after having spent a period of time in Hell.
Similarly, ‘contingent of Hell’ is not restricted to those who
dwell in the Hellfire forever, but can include anyone who enters
Hell for a period, even if they subsequently exit it and enter
Paradise. In other words, contrary to his interlocutor’s
predilection, such statements by the Prophet should not be read
in a spirit of vindictiveness whereby they maximize the number
of people who remain in Hell forever. Rather, according to
al-Ghazali, it is the rare exception that a person will abide
forever in Hell. This, he argues, is a testament to the vast and
all-encompassing nature of God’s mercy.
This was all directed towards those who professed Islam.
Al-Ghazali goes on, however, to insist that God’s mercy will
encompass non-Muslims as well, including ‘most of the
Christians of Byzantium and the [non-Muslim] Turks of this
age’. These people he divides into three categories: 1) those
who never heard so much as the name Muhammad; 2) those
who heard his name and had access to concrete and authentic
information about his life and mission; 3) those who heard of
him but received wrong, insufficient, or misleading information
about his life and mission. According to al-Ghazali, it is only
those of the second category, who come into reliable and concrete
information about Muhammad and, in a spirit of defiance, persist
in rejecting his prophethood, who will dwell forever in the
Hellfire. This is because only such people can be said to be
66 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

guilty of deeming the Prophet to be a liar. As for those of the

first and third categories, these will be covered by God’s all-
encompassing mercy. For, ultimately, their non-acceptance of
Muhammad’s prophethood is free of defiance and attributable
to circumstances beyond their control. In the end, besides the
outright, defiant rejecters, the only other people who will dwell
in Hell are those who fail or refuse to investigate the veracity of
the Prophet’s claims. Even here, however, those ultimately
condemned will in all likelihood constitute a minority. For,
according to al-Ghazali,

those possessed of faith in God and the Last Day, whatever religious
community they might belong to, cannot betray th[e] motivation
(to investigate the claims of and about Muhammad) after coming
into knowledge of these indications that were effected through
miraculous means that defied the laws of nature. And should they,
in all earnestness, take it upon themselves to investigate (this matter)
and seek (the truth thereof) and then be overcome by death before
being able to confirm this, they too shall be forgiven, by virtue of
His all-encompassing mercy.

Thus, al-Ghazali advises, one should think of God’s mercy as

being as vast and all-encompassing as it actually is and not try
to measure it with the inadequate scales of formal reasoning.
Indeed, just as those who are endowed with limited or inferior
rational powers have no cause to despair of God’s forgiveness
and mercy, neither do those who fail to come into proper belief
due to the inadequacies and limitations of their experience.

C. CONCLUSION

In human society there is ultimately no more powerful a position

than that of being just human. Not only is this the least contested
and most proveable of claims, it carries with it the putative
authority to speak for the commonality of humanity as a whole.
At bottom, this is a claim that every universal theology tends,
willy-nilly, to make. For this is the most expedient means of
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 67

overcoming the problem of being of limited relevance in both

space and time.
It is, here however, that theology perpetrates its most subtle
and enduring fiction: the human represented by the prototypical
theologian is bound by neither space nor time; he is
‘transcendent’ and speaks from beyond the pale of human
history. He harbours no biases, carries no past, and labours
under no provisional, half-, or untrue premises. As such, his
theological conclusions represent universal and eternal truth.
And only those who are morally depraved, intellectually
challenged, or simply averse to truth—in short, flawed in their
humanity—can fail to recognize this fact. History, meanwhile,
as the precarious and contingent in us all, is not acknowledged
as playing any role in the process. Instead, it is treated like the
Wizard of Oz, to whom we are told to pay no attention behind
that half-drawn curtain. In the end, it is the very invisibility of
the theologian’s history that makes both him and his theology
so powerful.
This claim to transcendence is, as we have seen, shared by
both Traditionalism and Rationalism. This is the ultimate
beginning and root cause of theological intolerance in Islam.
The only remedy for the problem is to expose the historical
situatedness of the theologians themselves. Once this is done, it
becomes a short and easy step to the argument that different
endowments of history yield different modalities and levels of
perception, none of which are in and of themselves any more or
less reflective of one’s commitment to God and revelation. This
is the basic diagnosis and remedy presented by Faysal.
Faysal does not set out to expose the historical situatedness
of the theologians directly; it simply implies this through its
detailed response to the inevitable conflict engendered by the
failure to acknowledge that situatedness. This is the whole point
behind al-Ghazali’s five levels of perception. As for his three
fundamentals, they merely reflect what all the groups, including
the Crypto-infidels, professed to believe in anyway. The same
could be said, ceteris paribus, of those doctrines that were
backed by consensus (ijma’) or handed down via diffuse
68 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

congruence (tawatur). In effect, these doctrines, by dint of the

unanimous recognition they enjoyed or the nature of the means
via which they had been preserved, had proved themselves to
be impervious to the specificities of any particular history. As
such, they could be said in effect to be ‘transcendent’ of history.
This, in the final analysis, is what qualifies these doctrines to
form the basis of a criterion for separating Belief from Unbelief.
This was the essence and main objective of Faysal. The rest
of the work is divided between al-Ghazali’s vindication of his
solution and some of his insights into some of the problems
connected with religion in society, especially the role of reason
and the vexed relationship between the religious individual and
the religious group. In the end, however, whatever influence
Faysal may or may not have had in 6th/12th century Nishapur,
perhaps a better measure of al-Ghazali’s genius is the amount
of profit with which his work can still be read by men and
women across the world in this, the 15th/21st century.

D. A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

I have relied on the 1961 Cairo edition of Faysal edited by

Sulayman Dunya, the most thorough edition to date. Among the
technical features of the translation, I note the following.
All translations of Qur’anic passages are my own.
All persons cited in the text have been identified in the notes.
The notes also contain additional commentary and clarification
of certain points.
Where al-Ghazali mentions a prophet, especially the Prophet
Muhammad, he almost invariably attaches the panegyric, ‘salla
Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallama (God’s blessings and salutations be
upon him).’ This proved too cumbersome to maintain throughout
the translation, so I opted to use an asterisk to represent it. Also,
the optative ‘ta ‘Gla (the Exalted),’ is used following the mention
of God. I tried to maintain this to the extent feasible, but where
this proved not to be the case I simply eliminated it.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 69

Given al-Ghazali’s less than stellar reputation as a scholar of

hadith, I have attempted to authenticate every hadith he cites in
the text. Here, however, a word of caution is in order. Faysal is
not a work of hadith, and it should not be expected that
al-Ghazali felt any need to follow the meticulous method of
citation established by the hadith-scholars. He was almost
certainly recalling these hadith from memory, as he appears
even to have embellished some; and he could probably assume
that most of these reports were well-known in the community.
He uses no chains, or isnads, and he appears to resort to
paraphrase on numerous occasions. All of this complicated my
attempts to locate these hadith. I relied partly on my memory of
where I had encountered some of them in the collections of
al-Bukhari, Muslim, and Abii Da’ud, and a few theological texts.
I relied more heavily, however, on al-‘Iraqi’s al-Mughni ‘an
haml al-asfar fi takhrij ma fi al-ihya’ min al-akhbar, and
A.J. Wensinck’s al-Mu ‘jam al-mufahras li alfaz al-hadith
al-nabawi. My aim in seeking to track down these hadith was
simply to establish that al-Ghazali was not pulling material out
of thin air in order to bolster his arguments. As such, wherever
I was able to find a hadith that matched his wording and or the
basic gist of his argument, I stopped and looked no further.
Similarly, if my initial finding was that a hadith had been classed
as fabricated, I accepted this and did not pursue the scholarly
discussions regarding the reliability of the hadith. This is an
obvious defect, for which the only excuses I can offer are my
limitations of time and scholarly expertise. I should add,
however, that this defect is significantly offset by the fact that
in almost every instance I was able to find material that
corroborated al-Ghazali’s citation. Ultimately, though my efforts
in this regard were far from exhaustive, they served the purposes
I had in mind. Future investigations may add to or even correct
some of my conclusions.
Finally, in translating Faysal I have tried to combine the
interests of accuracy and accessibility. I have tried to avoid
needlessly recondite language in order to appeal to a wider
audience. At the same time, I have tried to be accurate in
70 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

conveying the meaning of the text, particularly with regard to

technical terms and concepts. Beyond the issue of meaning,
however, I have also tried to convey something of that quiet
tone and majestic resonance that readers of al-Ghazali in Arabic
have come to know and appreciate. In the end, I can only hope,
and this is my solemn wish, that in my attempt to combine these
interests my pen.did not get the better of me, and that I have
compromised neither myself nor the great Hujjat al-Islam
Abii Hamid al-Ghazali.

NOTES

1. See, e.g., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, ed. J. Bowker,

(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 970.
2. See, e.g., An Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. V. Ferm, (New York:
Philosophical Library, Inc., 1945), 782.
3. See, A. J. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1932), 1-2.
4. The term heresy derives from the Greek hairesis, i.e., choice, election,
course of action. In its early Christian context it came to apply to views
that contradicted the teachings and authority of the Church, thus
acquiring the meaning of wrong choice or unauthorized choice. See,
J.B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy:
Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish and Early Christian Patterns, (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998), 16-17. Henderson’s
treatment of Islam is based entirely on secondary literature.
5. See, Oxford Dictionary, 423. On this distinction in Islam, see the views
of al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiya below, p. 54.
6. See, e.g., A. Azmeh, ‘Orthodoxy and Hanbalite Fideism,’ Arabica,
vol. 35, no. 3 (November 1988); 253-67, wherein it is stated that
orthodoxy and heresy have more to do with authority than they do with
substance. I am in general agreement with Azmeh, but only if by
authority he means the ability to enlist assent or obedience on the belief
that the authority figure has the right to be obeyed. There is a sense,
however, in which Azmeh appears to use authority in the sense of the
ability to force compliance (my understanding of power). With this I do
not agree. For while there are instances in Muslim history where might
sought to make right (as in the case of the infamous Mihna [Inquisition]
or the promulgation of the Qadiri Creed associated with the ‘Abbasid
Caliph al-Qadir billah), there are too many counter-examples to sustain
this as the general trend. For example, Sunnis living under Fatimid rule
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 71

did not as a rule suffer officially sanctioned policies to force them to

accept Fatimid Isma‘ilism as orthodox and Sunnism, along with Imami
Shi‘ism, as heterodox. Nor were Shi‘ites living under Sunni rule
officially forced, as a rule, to declare Sunnism as orthodox and their
own Shi‘ite view as heterodox. On the distinction maintained here
between power and authority, see, the excellent article by G. Makdisi,
‘Authority in the Islamic Community’ in ‘La notion d’autorité au moyen
age: Islam, Byzanc, Occident,’ ed. D. Sourdel and J. Sourdel-Thomine
(Paris: Universitaires de France, 1982), 117-26.
The Mu‘tazilite theologian, al-Qadi ‘Abd al-Jabbar (d. 415/1024), for
example, writing nearly two centuries after the Mu‘tazilite débacle in
the Mihna, composed an entire book, entitled The Superiority of
Mu ‘tazilism and the Classes of Mu ‘tazilites, in which those who rejected
figurative interpretations of such scriptural data as that indicating God’s
mounting the Throne (al-istiwa’ ‘ala al-‘arsh) or His ‘coming’
(maji’... ‘wa ja’a rabbuka’) were excoriated as anthropomorphists who
were ‘worse than those who worshipped idols’. See, Fadl al-i‘tizal wa
tabagat al-mu‘tazila, ed. Fu’ad Sayyid (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tinisiya li
al-Nashr, 1393/1974), 152.
. On my use of deism, see below pp. 58-9.
. For an explanation of tawatur, see my discussion below, pp. 47-8.
10. For the definition of religion I rely upon, see below, pp. 8-9.
i® For stark examples of both the tendency to abuse ‘kufr’ and to write it
out of the Muslim lexicon, see, F. Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and
Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against
Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld Press, 1997).
#2. Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, transl. A. Hamori and
R. Hamori (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 67.
13: See, e.g., F. Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Minneapolis:
Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), 80-105.
14. This is not to claim, after the fashion of Goldziher and others, that the
Prophet was not a lawgiver and had no legal authority. It is simply to
point out the difference between laying down legal rules, on the one
hand, and engaging in the systematic interpretation of the meaning,
scope, and application of those rules, on the other. The US Congress,
for example, is both a legal authority and a law-giving body, but one
does not have to hold a law degree to be a member of Congress.
15: See, e.g., W. Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (New York: Doubleday
and Company, Inc., 1961), 142. Also, see ibid, 143: ‘Theology moves
no mountains; it rarely moves people; it is something most people put
up with, something they do not take seriously, something good manners
requires one to respect—and not to think about.’
72 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

16. On the different modern uses of the term religion, see,

R.T. McCutcheon, ‘The Category “Religion” in Recent Publications:
A Critical Survey,’ Numen, vol. 42, no. 3 (1995): 284-309.
17. See, e.g., Patterns of Religion, ed. R. Schmidt et al. (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999), 4-5. Meanwhile, the Oxford
Dictionary, xv, states: ‘The Latin religio refers to the fear of God or the
gods, and (much later) to the ceremonies and rites addressed to the
gods. But it does so through its reference also to the scrupulous and
often over-anxious way in which rituals are conducted.’ Greater attention
to such basic definitions might serve to check the tendency among
some to exaggerate the degree of licence taken in referring to Islam as a
religion, preferring instead to speak of it as ‘a way of life’. For
definitions such as the one just cited suggest that the real issue is not
religion versus life, but rather how broad or narrow the scope of rituals
and obligations in a religion are. In some religions this scope may be
narrow, while in others, like Islam (or Judaism), it may be extremely
broad.
18. Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity in the United States
(New York: University Press of America, 1984), 30ff. According to
Washington, the five religions in America were Secularism, Judaism,
Protestantism, Catholicism, and Black Religion. Writing in the 1960s
(the first edition of Black Religion was published by Beacon Press in
1966), Islam had not yet come to constitute in Washington’s view a
bona fide American religion.
19, This was a criticism by Washington, not a mere observation. ‘Black
Theology,’ which made its debut in the late 60s and early 70s
(the leading figure being unquestionably James Cone, followed by
J. Deotis Roberts) was supposed to answer Black Religion’s need for a
theology. On this point, see, Black Theology, ed. J. Cone and
G.Wilmore, 2 vols. (New York: Orbis Press, 1993), 1: 453-4.
20. See, above, p. 3.
21. See, his critique of kalam below, pp. 59-64, especially where he speaks
of theologians who hold kalam to be the only way to truth and those
who have not mastered this science to be devoid of faith. See also,
pp. 62-4 below, on the distinction between knowledge and realization
of truth.
22. On this point, see, Wensinck, op.cit., 1-2 and 248ff.
23. In the early period, i.e., at least as late as al-Tabari, who died in 310/922,
the term ta’wil was used as a synonym for tafsir, i.e., simple exegesis.
Later it would come to be used more exclusively to refer to figurative
or metaphorical interpretation.
24. See, Oxford Dictionary, 329.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 73

255 Abi Ja‘far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Jami‘ al-bayan ‘an ta’wil
al-qur’an 2nd ed., 30 vols. (Cairo: Muhammad Mahmid al-Halabi,
1388/1968), 30: 184-8.
26. Jami‘, 1: 192. At Jami‘, 8: 205, in treating the first appearance of the
phrase istawa ‘ala al-‘arsh, al-Tabari indicates that it was a source of
controversy and that he had explained its meaning in a previous
discussion. The first time the verb istawa appears in the Qur’an is at
2:29, from which I took the present material.
27, See, e.g., his Usiil ahl al-sunna wa al-jama‘a (also known as RisG@lat
ahl al-thaghr) ed. M.S. al-Julaynd (Cairo: n.p., 1987) 73-5.
28. See, e.g., his Kitab al-tawhid, ed. F. Kholeif (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq,
1986), 67-77.
29. See, e.g., his al-Radd ‘ala al-zanadigqa wa al-jahmiya (Cairo: Dar
al-Salafiya, 1399/1979).
30. See, e.g., his al-Radd ‘ala al-jahmiya, ed. G.Vitesam (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1960), 13-29.
Sh; al-Radd ‘ala al-zanadiga, 50-1 (but see 48-53 for the entire explanation).
32. It is interesting that, over the entire course of this argument, Imam
Ahmad adduces not a single hadith! Also, at risk of stating the obvious,
any Rationalist work would bear out my point about the distinction
between theology and exegesis with equal if not more clarity than does
Imam Ahmad’s Radd.
33. Interestingly, none other than al-Ghazali himself would attempt to refute
(or disguise) this fact in his al-Qistas al-mustagim, where he tried to
show that Aristotelian logic had been used in and prescribed by the
Qur’an.
34. See, e.g., M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1970); M.M. Sharif, A History of Muslim
Philosophy (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Press, 1963-6); W.M. Watt, The
Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1973); M. Cook, Early Muslim Dogma (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); G. Hourani, ‘Islamic and non-Islamic Origins
of Mu‘tazilite Ethical Rationalism,’ International Journal of Middle
East Studies 7 (1976): 59-87.
35. W.M. Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1985), 37. This is a revised and expanded edition of
the same work published in 1962. Elsewhere Watt points out,
incidentally, that this insistence on self-sufficiency in the face of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary was also characteristic of
medieval and early modern Christianity, which downplayed its debt to
Islam and exaggerated its dependence on ancient Greece and Rome.
See, his The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1972), 84.
74 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

36. Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative

History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
a7: (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), vii-xiii.
38. ‘Islam,’ Late Antiquity, 219. Emphasis added.
39: Watt, Islamic Philosophy, 37.
40. Proponents of Traditionalism might argue, of course, that the Arab
nativist tradition of 7th century (cE) Arabia, in its capacity as the
ideational backdrop against which revelation acquired whatever meaning
it came to have to the Prophet and his Companions, was part of what
W. Graham refers to as the ‘revelatory event,’ of which the Qur’an was
the main but not the only constituent. In other words, God’s act of
choosing this backdrop as the context in which to reveal His will
effectively confers upon it the status of ‘revelation’ (small ‘r,’ in contrast
to capital ‘R,’ i.e., Revelation, including the Qur’an and, by extension,
the Sunna). In considering this claim, however, see my discussion on
tradition and Traditionalism below, pp. 24-9. On Graham’s concept of
the revelatory event, see, his Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early
Islam (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1977), 9-13.
41. See, especially, his discussion below at pp. 49-55.
42. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), vii.
43. Ibid., ix.
44. Ibid., ix. One wonders where this leaves the Ash‘arites and Maturidites.
Unless one buys into the Traditionalist attempt to exclude them, they
should certainly be included among the al al-sunna wa al-jama‘a. Of
course, Ash‘arites and Maturidites were also known to exclude
Traditionalists. But this is precisely the problem: the history of Muslim
theology cannot be seen clearly through the ideological lens of either
group. See below pp. 16-29.
45. Ibid., ix-x. At p. ix, Abrahamov notes that he is not entirely comfortable
with the term ‘Rationalism,’ but on p. 32 he says that, ‘since there are
ingredients of rationalism in Islamic theology, I prefer to use the term.’
46. Ibid., x.
47. Ibid., x.
48. Ibid., x. See below, pp. 102-3, however, where al-Ghazali affirms that
the Mu‘tazilites are indeed more rationalistic than the Ash‘arites, but
for reasons different from those given by Abrahamov.
49. Abrahamov speaks of ‘pure traditionalists who do not use reason,’ but
fails to identify this category with any particular individuals or groups.
Also, the Ash‘arites seem to play a dual role, now Rationalists when
compared to Traditionalists, now Traditionalists when compared to
Mu‘tazilites.
50. This expanded use of ‘revelation’ draws on W. Graham’s theory of the
Prophet’s standing at the centre of a ‘revelatory event’. See above,
n. 40. The inclusion of hadith in this construct assumes, of course, their
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 75

sound attribution to the Prophet. On the distinction implied here between

hadith and Sunna, see, Y. Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law: The
Qur’an, the Muwatta’ and Madinan ‘Amal (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999),
168-77.
51. Throughout this introduction I use the phrase ‘Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
tradition’. It should be noted, however, that in doing so I am not claiming
that Muslim rationalists, specifically the mutakallimiin, drew upon such
Neoplatonic staples as emanationism or the Agent Intellect in the same
way that the Muslim falasifa did. My point is simply that certain
Neoplatonic assumptions and polarities informed the thought of the
mutakallimun. For example, the attribution of a body to God was not
only inadmissible because it constituted anthropomorphism (i.e., accidents
inhering in the divine); it was also rejected because it entailed the
attribution of evil to God. As H. Chadwick notes in his essay on the
Neoplatonic legacy in Late Antiquity, ‘Plotinus had no hesitation labeling
the body as an evil on the ground of its materiality.’ See, his ‘Philosophical
Tradition and the Self,’ Late Antiquity, 63. Similarly, the notion that God
could not be mounted on the Throne or located in any direction seems
also to reflect a Neoplatonic bias. As Chadwick notes, Neoplatonists held
that ‘God is everywhere because he is nowhere.’ Ibid., 67. My point,
then, in associating the mutakallimiin with Neoplatonism is merely that
the latter appears to have bequeathed certain biases to the former, even as
the former would reject such basic notions as emanationism. Indeed,
among the manifest characteristics of the early translations of Greek
works into Arabic, scholars have noted ‘a tendency towards interpretation
with a markedly Neoplotonic preference’. See D. Gutas, Greek Thought,
Arabic Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998), 146.
See, e.g., Ahmad b. Yahya Ibn al-Murtada, Zabaqat al-mu‘tazila, ed.
S. D. Wilzer (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Publishers, 1961), 7 (but see
the entire discussion from 5-7), where the pedigree of Wasil b. ‘Ata’
and ‘Amr b. ‘Ubayd, the reputed founders of Mu‘tazilism, are traced
back to the Prophet through ‘Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya
and his father, Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya through ‘Ali b. Abi Talib.
53: As A. Knysh perceptively points out: ‘Seen within the broader historical
context, the Mu‘tazilites, who had inherited the methods of speculation,
harbouring back to the Greek and Christian patterns, also had a good
claim to be called “traditionalists”.’ See, his ‘Orthodoxy and Heresy in
Medieval Islam: An Essay in Reassessment,’ The Muslim World, no. 83,
vol. 1 (1993): 55.
54. At one point, for example, in a colourful display of his contempt for
Rationalists who reject isolated (ahadi) hadith on the argument that
they do not yield certainty, and then adduce in their place rational
arguments that are also far from certain, the Hanbalite Ibn Qudama
exclaims: ‘Their case is like a blind man urinating on a roof, facing the
76 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

people with his pudendum, and supposing that no one sees him, since
he himself is incapable of seeing his own person.’ See, G. Makdisi
(transl.), Jbn Qudama’s Censure of Speculative Theology (London:
Luzac and Company Ltd., 1962), 33.
oo: This is well-known in the case of Traditionalism (see, e.g., Azmeh,
ibid.). But even as late as the Sth/11th century, the Mu‘tazilite ‘Abd
al-Jabbar could insist on the obligation to rely on one’s fitra, or
primordial nature. At one point, for instance, clearly annoyed at a
Traditionalist interpretation of a hadith, he states defiantly, ‘it is not
permissible for a person to abandon what God has naturally ingrained
(rakkaba) in his intellect on the basis of this hadith’. See, Fadl al-i‘tizal,
148; see also, ibid., 189ff.
56. Islamic Theology, x. This is a common depiction among scholars of
Muslim theology and is by no means limited to Prof. Abrahamov. I have
simply relied on him for the clarity and straightforwardness with which
he expresses this point of view.
Sit Tashbih, literally ‘to liken,’ is to liken God to created entities. Other
terms commonly found in the literature, e.g., tamthil (lit., ‘to draw
similarity’) and takyif (‘to posit modality’) are similar in their technical
meaning to tashbih. Tajsim, on the other hand, literally, ‘to
corporealize,’ is to attribute corporeality or a physical body to God. All
of these forms of ‘anthropomorphism’ share in the act of attributing
accidents (a ‘rad/s. ‘arad) to God.
58. On the continued obsession with being as the ‘ultimate concern’ of
theology, see, P. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1:20ff.
a9: T. Izutsu, Creation and the Timeless Order of Things (Ashland, Oregon:
White Cloud Press, 1998), 3-4.
60. The most concise and useful presentation on this particular issue appears
in Hartshorne’s Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers (New York:
State University of New York Press,1983), 40-56, esp. 43ff. Another
important and relevant work of his is Omnipotence and Other
Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1984). For a reaction to Hartshorne by numerous philosophers, see,
L.E. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne — Salle, IL:
Open Court Bread 1991).
61. Pace Abrahamov, Islamic Theology, 81 (n. 37): lattnatebiatatiats
(tashbih) means likening God to man.’ Abrahamov is of course
technically correct (‘anthropomorphism’ being from the Greek
anthropos, human, and morphe, form). But the concept as such is
underinclusive in the context of Muslim theology. For tashbih, takyif,
tamthil, and even tajsim covered not only human likenesses to God but
all created likenesses to God, God being distinguished from created
entities by the fact that the latter are possessed of accidents.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO Wy

62. Insights, 50-1.

63. To take just one random example, the last part of a lengthy hadith in
al-Bukhari, 9: 796-98 (Kitab al-tawhid) reads: ‘...then he continues to
petition (God) until God laughs at him; and when God reaches the point
of laughing at him He says to him, “enter Paradise”.’
64. E.g., the idea that God is the creator of processes of becoming rather
than states of being renders problematic (or at least changes the meaning
of) the notion of God’s complete control over reality. Similarly, the
idea that created entities carry in themselves an element of choice in
their own coming to completion complicates the notion of unilateral
divine intervention. Indeed, on such an understanding, basic concepts
like prayer and miracles would have to be radically reinterpreted. On
these and related critiques of Process Theology, see, D. Basinger, Divine
Power in Process Theism (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1988), Sff.
65. It should not be understood by this that Traditionalists are limited to the
Hanbalite school; the Shafi‘i, Hanafi, and Maliki schools all have
Traditionalist wings. The Hanbalite school is distinguished, however,
by the fact that it was exclusively Traditionalist in theology. It is the
only Sunni school that holds this distinction. See, e.g., G. Makdisi,
‘Hanbalite Islam,’ 239.
66. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
67. Tradition, 219.
68. Ibid., 219.
69. Ibid., 221.
70. Ibid., 221.
71, al-Umm, 8 vols., ed. Muhammad Zuhri al-Najjar (Cairo: Maktabat
Kulliyat al-Azhar, 1381/1961), 7: 191-4.
72. al-Risala, ed. Anmad Muhammad Shakir (Cairo: Dar al-Turath, 1979),
533ff. For an example of an early Maliki response to such charges, see,
my ‘Setting the Record Straight: Ibn al-Labbad’s Refutation of al-
Shafi‘i,’ Journal of Islamic Studies 11: 2 (2000): 121-46.
73% Abi Ja‘far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Tarikh al-tabari, ed.
Muhammad Abi al-Fad! Ibrahim, 9 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, n.d),
8: 639. A more contemporary example of this ‘processing’ appears in
the work of a leading authority in the Salafi movement, the late
Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, Talkhis sifat salat al-nabi (British
Columbia: Majliss of al-Haqq Publications, n.d.), 29. In describing the
tashahhud (supplication made in the sitting position at the end of the
second and final units of prayer), al-Albani notes that after the death of
the Prophet one should say, ‘Peace unto the Prophet (as-salamu ‘ala
‘n-nabi)’ instead of, ‘Peace be unto you, O Prophet (as-salamu ‘alayka
ayyuha ‘n-nabi)’, as explicitly handed down in hadith. Al-Albani
appears to be motivated here by a desire to avoid implicating the Prophet
78 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

in the practice of calling upon dead saints (known as tawassul and or

istighatha) as practiced by some Sufis. He cites in support of his view
the practice of the Companions Ibn Mas‘id, ‘A’isha, Ibn al-Zubayr,
and Ibn ‘Abbas. This, however, i.e., the fact that these Companions
‘processed’ what was handed down, actually adds to rather than detracts
from my point.
74. L. Gardet and M.M. Anawati, e.g., in their ‘Jntroduction a la Théologie
Musulmane: Essai de Théologie Comparée (Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1948) seem to give the impression that theology
is synonymous with kalam.
(hy Abrahamov, op.cit., vii.
76. This, incidentally, is a major source of the seemingly natural attraction
between African-American Muslims and the theological outlook of
Traditionalism (now in the form of Salafism), even when they are
repelled or confused by the social or political ideology of the latter. In
the words of J.D. Roberts, ‘The Platonic-Aristotelian logical and
metaphysical tradition is alien to th{e] Black religious tradition.’ See,
his ‘A Creative Response to Racism: Black Theology,’ The Church and
Racism, ed. G. Baum and J. Coleman (New York: Seabury Press, 1982),
41. Similarly, the increasing estrangement of the modern mind from the
intellectual schemas of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition—with no
comparable, agreed-upon replacement—goes a long way (along with
massive increases in literacy and the availability of books) in explaining
the increasing popularity of ‘fundamentalist’ interpretations in both
Christianity and Islam.
Te Philosophy and Theology, 19. See also, idem, The Formative Period of
Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), 5-6.
A similar view is also expressed by Makdisi and Goldziher. See,
‘Hanbalite Islam,’ 251.
78. See above, note 6.
EE The example of university professors is demonstrative of what I have in
mind by formal versus informal authority. As far as formal authority is
concerned, all of them are vested with Ph.D degrees. Yet, despite this
formal equality, the opinions of some are more influential than those of
others, though there is no formal title corresponding to this marginal
advantage.
80. al-Mungidh min al-dalal wa al-muwassil ila dhi al-‘izza wa al-jalal, ed.
J. Saliba and K. ‘Iyad (Beirut: Dar al-Andalus, n.d), 114.
81. As, for example, with the Edict in support of Mu‘tazilism by the Caliph
al-Ma’min (regency: 198/218) or the Edict in support of Traditionalism
in the name of the Caliph al-Qadir in the Sth/11th century. See,
G. Makdisi, Ibn ‘Agil, 8ff.
82. On this point, see, G. Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 106.
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 719

83. Mungqidh, 134.

84. Ibid., 159.
85. See, R. Frank, Al-Ghazali and the Ash‘arite School (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1994), 100.
86. This work has been translated by D. Margoliouth under the title, The
Devil’s Delusions. Publication details unavailable.
87. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Kutub al-Thaqafiya, 1407/1986).
88. Thya’, 1: 58.
89. Rise, 133, but see the whole section on ‘Munazara-Disputation,’ 128-46.
On the use of ad hominem diatribes, Makdisi writes: ‘It happened often
in a disputation that a disputant, unable to subdue his opponent, resorted
to ridicule or downright insolence.’ Ibid., 135.
90. Thya’, 1: 22.
ot. I. A. Bello, The Medieval Isiamic Controversy Between Philosophy and
Orthodoxy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 9-10. Bello thus focuses almost
exclusively on the relationship between Faysal and al-Ghazali’s polemic
against the Muslim Neoplatonic philosophers, Tahafut al-falasifa
(The Incoherence of the Philosophers).
92. ‘Al-Ghazali,’ E72, 2: 1040.
93. Ash‘arite School, 78. At ibid., 88, Professor Frank notes that
al-Ghazali’s aim overall, i.e., not in Faysal specifically, was to present
a ‘global theological vision that in its higher metaphysics and ethics
embraces all the sciences, disciplines and practices proper to or
recognized by Islam—all levels of Muslim experience, knowledge,
belief and activity—within an integrated whole’. This to my mind is
more consistent with al-Ghazali’s aim in Faysal.
94. Professor Frank’s interpretation appears at times to be overly informed
by his view that al-Ghazali was ‘intellectually pompous’ (Ash ‘arite
School, x). It is difficult to gauge the meaning of such a charge when
virtually everybody in medieval society wrote with self-assuredness.
Moreover, while the Jhya’ contains language that is suggestive of a
certain elitism, there are also egalitarian sentiments indicating that truth
is open to everybody. For example, at [hya’, 3: 14, after discussing the
reasons people fail to apprehend the truth, al-Ghazali says: ‘These,
then, are the reasons that prevent hearts from knowing the reality of
things. Otherwise, every heart is by nature capable of apprehending
reality; for this is a noble, divine affair (amr rabbani sharif) on the
basis of which humans differ from the rest of creation...’. Emphasis
mine.
95. Even as partisan an Ash‘arite as Taj al-Din al-Subki would admit that
Ash‘arism is more of a method and orientation than a body of doctrine.
He points out that many Ash‘arites, e.g., al-Ghazali’s teacher,
al-Juwayni, and al-Ghazali, diverged on individual points of doctrine
while remaining Ash‘arites. See, his Tabaqat al-shafi ‘iya, 10 vols., ed.
80 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

A.M. Hulw and M.M. Tanahi (Cairo:‘Isa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1384/1965),

6: 244ff. Professor Frank appears, however, to take at face value the
fanatical views of al-Baghdadi (see below), according to whom
Ash‘arism was a much narrower construct. Al-Baghdadi, incidentally,
appears to have exerted an enormous impact on the study of Muslim
theology from behind the scenes, laying the groundwork for a
theological essentialism that became the basis for critical judgements
about individual theologians and theological schools.
96. Ash ‘arite School, 21-2.
97. The quote is from Goldziher’s ‘Vorlesungen tiber den Islam’
(Heidelberg, 1910), cited in G. Makdisi, ‘Hanbalite Islam,’ Studies on
Islam, trans. and ed. M. Swartz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981),
252 (Swartz’s translation).
98. On the meaning of material heresy, see, above, p. 3.
99: Usiul al-din, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiya, 1401/1981), 335.
This is a reprint of the 1928 Istanbul edition.
100. Ibid., 234.
101. Ibid., 267.
102. Fadl al-i ‘tizal, 152.
103. Usul al-din, 251.
104. Ibid., 254.
105. Ibid., 195.
106. Ibid., 67.
107. See, G. Makdisi, ‘Ash‘ari and the Ash‘arites in Islamic Religious History
II,’ Studia Islamica 18 (1963): 37ff.
108. Ed. ‘A. Badawi (Cairo: al-Dar al-Qawmiya li al-Tiba‘a wa al-Nashr,
1383/1964). See, p. d (dal) of Badawi’s introduction, where he states
that al-Baghdadi was al-Ghazali’s source for his information on the
Batinites.
109. In fact, there is clear evidence (al-Iqtisad fi al-i‘tigad (Cairo: Mustafa
al-Babi al-Halabi and Sons, n.d.], 120) that he had already begun to
think about the issue of takfir (deeming a person to be an Unbeliever)
while he was still in Baghdad.
110. Makdisi, Jbn ‘Aqil, 9 (but see, 9-11).
111. Cf. Kaufmann, speaking in a Judaeo-Christian context: ‘It is, no doubt,
exceedingly difficult to be fair, but theology is founded on a
comprehensive, rigorous and systematic refusal to as much as attempt
to be fair. It does not merely occasionally lapse into acceptance of a
double standard: theology is based on a devout commitment to a double
standard.’ Faith, 118.
112. He notes, however, that tawatur can yield different levels of certainty,
depending on its object. Thus, while both the existence of Mecca and
that of the prophet Ilyas have been reported via tawatur, one finds
 INTRODUCTION: PART TWO 81

oneself more certain of the existence of Mecca than one does of the
existence of Ilyas. See, Ihya’, 1: 73.
i13. The position of al-Nazzam is reported by al-Ghazali himself. On Ibn
Hazm’s position, see, his al-Ihkam fi usil al-ahkam, 8 vols., ed. A. M.
Shakir (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1403/1983), 4: 147-51.
114. In the interest of clarity, I use my own example rather than the more
distant examples given by al-Ghazali.
IN See, the discussion above on Traditionalism.
116. Majmii ‘fatawa ibn taymiya, 37 vols., ed. ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad
Qasim al-‘Asimi al-Najdi al-Hanbali (Beirut: Dar al-‘Arabiya,
1398/1977), 7: 472. See also, his definitive statement on primary versus
secondary doctrines in Muwafagat sahih al-manqil li sarih al-ma ‘gil,
2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiya, 1405/1985), 1:87.
117. E.g., Alchemy of Happiness, Refutation of the Permissivists, and Advice
to Rulers. See, G. Hourani, ‘A Revised Chronology of Ghazali’s
Writings,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 104.2 (1984): 300-1.
118. See, his entry ‘Mazdaksim,’ Late Antiquity, 570.
119. Quoted in R. Lim, ‘Christian Triumph and Controversy,’ Late Antiquity,
218.
120. M. Ibrahim, ‘Religious Inquisition as Social Policy: The Persecution of
the Zanadiga in the Early Abbasid Caliphate,’ Arab Studies Quarterly,
vol. 16, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 54-5. One wonders what light this might
shed on the early development of the Mu‘tazilites as a movement against
heresy as opposed to lukewarm, duplicitous promoters thereof.
1a Ee Makdisi, Censure, 5.
122. Ibid., 5. Note, incidentally, that Ibn Qudama’s testimony demonstrates
that Traditionalists not only processed, selectively endorsed, and added
to what was handed down, but that on some level they were both aware
and accepting of this.
123. See, Majmiu‘ fatawa, 7: 741, 7: 471-2, 12: 352. (Fuqaha’/s. fagih, are
the authoritative doctors of the law along with their protegés at the
advanced stage of their legal education.)
124. For al-Ghazali’s detailed argument against the philosophers, see,
M. Marmura’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers (a translation of
al-Ghazali’s Tahafut al-falasifa) (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young
University Press, 1997).
125; In Islamic law, an unmarried person can only commit fornication, not
adultery, even if his/her partner in the offence is married. Similarly,
most acts of pilferage fall short of the legal definition of theft (sariqa).
126. See, Frank, Ash ‘arite School, 93.
127. al-Milal wa al-nihal, 2 vols., ed. A.Muhanna and A. Fa‘ir (Beirut: Dar
al-Ma‘rifa, 1417/1997), 2: 490.
128. Ed. A.A. Ghurab (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1387/1967). See, e.g.,
p. 136, where he speaks of the sentient pleasures of the Hereafter.
82 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

129. See, Hourani, ‘Revised Chronology,’ 301-2.

130. Mungidh, 77-8. See my comments above, however, on al-Ghazali’s
‘sober Sufism’.
131. For more on this issue, see, my ‘The Alchemy of Domination? Some
Ash‘arite Responses to Mu‘tazilite Ethics,’ International Journal of
Middle East Studies 31, (1999): 185-201.
132. As late as al-Mustasfa, which was written after both Faysal and
Mungqidh, al-Ghazali would write: ‘Reason knows the way to safety,
while human instinct (a/-tab‘) urges one to travel that route. For the
love of self and disdain of pain is ingrained in every human. Thus, you
have erred in stating that reason (al-‘ag/) is a motivator (d@‘in). Nay,
reason is only a guide (hadin), while impulses and motives (al-bawa ‘ith
wa al-dawa‘t) issue from the self (al-nafs), based on information
provided by reason.’ See, al-Mustasfa min ‘ilm usil al-figh, 2 vols.
(Cairo: al-Amiriya Press, 1322/1904), 1: 61.
133. Ihya’, 1:97.
134. Cf. G. Makdisi, ‘Al-Ghazali, disciple d’al-Shafi en droit et en
théologie,’ in Ghazali, la raison et le mirdcle (Paris: Editions
Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 45-55.
135. C.F. Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian
Orthodoxy (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1994),
20.
136. See, H. Landholt, ‘Ghazali and Religionswissenschaft,’ in Asiatische
Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, vol. 45, no. 1 (1991): 46.
137. See, his foreword to The Niche of Lights, trans. D. Buchman (Provo,
Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1998), xii.
138. However, al-Ghazali’s actual characterization of this gnosis in Faysal
renders Professor Frank’s description of it as a ‘higher theology’
problematic. See, below, p. 124.
139. Mungqidh, 149.
140. Ibid.
141. Systematic Theology, 1: 46.
 \2
“9

Annotated Translation of
Faysal al-Tafriga Bayna al-Islam
wa al-Zandaqa

The Decisive Criterion for

Distinguishing Islam from
Masked Infidelity

Abi Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad

b. Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 505/111)

o,
“9
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Mercy-Bestowing

Said the noble Imam and scholar, Abi Hamid Muhammad

b. Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Ghazali, may God show him
mercy: I praise God the Exalted, as a gesture of surrender to His
might and a means of obtaining the optimum of His bounty,
seeking thereby to avail myself of the success, aid, and
(efficacy of) obedience that only He can grant, and to forestall
(the travesty of) being forsaken by Him and of disobeying Him,
that I might bring upon myself His ever-flowing bounty. And
I send prayers upon His servant and messenger, Muhammad,
the best of His creation, in open recognition of his prophethood,
in hopes of acquiring the benefit of his intercession, surrendering
to him his right (as prophet) upon me, seeking refuge in the
felicitous rays of his innermost being and (the purity of) his
soul. I send prayers, as well, upon his family, his Companions,
and his descendants all. .
To proceed: I see, my dear brother and partisan friend, that
when a party of the envious assaulted your ears with criticisms
against some of the books we wrote concerning the secrets of
how religion works, along with their claim that these works
contain views that go against the doctrine of our predecessors
and the masters among the speculative theologians (mashayikh
al-mutakallimin), and that digressing from the Ash‘arite school
of theology, even so much as a hand’s length, is an act of
Unbelief (kufr), and that parting with this school, even in the
finest of details, is misguidance and ruin, your soul became
agitated with bitter feelings, and your thoughts became disjointed
and frayed. But I bid you, my dear, partisan friend, to be easy
86 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

on yourself and not to become perturbed. Tame your emotions a

bit, be patient with what they say, and part with them with due
civility. Think little of those who are not envied and vilified.
And think the same of those who are not branded as misguided
and accused of Unbelief. For what more perfect and reasonable
advocate could there have been than the Master of Messengers*?
Yet, they said of him that he was no more than a common
madman.' And what speech could be more glorious and true
than that of the Lord of All Being? Yet, they said about it: ‘It is
but tales of the ancients.’ So beware of becoming preoccupied
with arguing with these people, or with entertaining hopes of
silencing them. For to do so is to hope for the impossible,
indeed, like speaking to the deaf. Have you not heard the saying,

‘The resolution of all conflict may be hoped for

Save a conflict with one who opposes you out of envy’?

Indeed, were such a hope to be entertained by anyone, verses

foretelling the futility (of inviting certain persons to the truth)
would not have been revealed to the best of people. Yet, have
you not heard the Exalted’s statement:

And if their turning away weighs heavily upon you, then seek, if
you are able, a tunnel in the ground or a ladder to the heavens in
order to bring a (clear) sign to them (as if that would do any good).
Nay, had it been God’s will He would have gathered them all upon
(true) guidance. So do not be among those who are ignorant. (XI:35)

And the Exalted’s statement:

And were We to open up for them a door to the heavens through

which they continued to ascend (ever higher), they would say, ‘Our
eyes have simply been afflicted with some malady; nay, we are a
people bewitched’.’ (XV: 14-15)
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 87

And the Exalted’s statement:

And had We sent down to you a book on parchments such that they
could touch it with their very hands, those who reject the truth
would have simply said, ‘This is but manifest magic’. (VI: 7)

And the Exalted’s statement:

And, had it come to pass that We sent down angels to them and the
dead spoke to them (directly) and We gathered before them every
reality so that they could see it face to face, they would (still) not
acknowledge the truth, unless God so willed. But most of them are
ignorant. (VI: III)

II

Now, know that the reality and true definition of what constitutes
Unbelief (kufr) and what constitutes faith (iman) does not
manifest itself to those whose hearts have been polluted by the
pursuit of reputation and the piling up of wealth; nor does the
true definition and inner secret of truth (haqq) or misguidance
(dalal). On the contrary, these things are revealed only to those
whose hearts have been cleansed of the impurities and pollutants
of this transient life, then refined through perfected spiritual
exercises and enlightened through pure remembrance of God,
then nourished by right thinking and embellished with adherence
to the religious law, then drenched in the light that arcs from the
niche of prophethood, at which time their hearts become as if
they were immaculate mirrors, the oil-lamp of faith (iman) that
rests in the enclosed glass around them becoming a source of
light, its oil virtually glowing though fire touches it not.?
How could the hidden truths of the immaterial world
(malakit*) manifest themselves to a people whose god (i/ah) is
their undisciplined passions (hawa@), whose object of worship
(ma ‘bid) is their leaders, whose direction of prayer (qibla) is
the dinar, whose religious law is their own frivolity, whose will
(irada) is the promotion of reputation and carnal pleasures,
whose worship (‘ibada) is the service they render the rich among
88 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

them, whose remembrance (of God) is the devilish whisperings

of their souls, ‘whose most cherished possession is their
(relationship with their) political leaders, and whose every thought
is preoccupied with extracting legal dodges (hiyal/ sg. hila) to
accommodate the dictates of their (would-be) sense of shame?
For such a people, how is the darkness of Unbelief to
distinguish itself from the light of faith? By some divine
inspiration (i/ham)? But they have not emptied their hearts of
the dregs of this transient life such that they would be in a
position to receive such inspiration. By perfecting the (religious)
sciences? But all they possess of the religious sciences is
knowledge of such things as the rules of ritual purity and
whether or not water distilled from saffron can be used for
ritual purification. How preposterous (to expect such knowledge
to come to such people)! Nay, this quest is too precious and too
dear to be realized through sheer wishful thinking or leisurely
pursuit. Therefore, busy yourself with your own affair, and do
not waste what remains of your time on them.

So turn away from him who has turned away from Our reminder
and desired nothing more than (the pleasures of) this transient life.
Such is the limit of their knowledge. But, verily, your Lord is most
knowledgeable of those who have strayed from His path, as He is
most knowledgeable of those who are guided. (LIII: 29-30)

Il

As for you yourself, if your aim is to extract this rancour from

your heart and from the hearts of those like you who are not
seduced by the provocations of the envious and not afflicted by
that blindness that condemns people to being led around by
others (taqglid), but who instead thirst for insight into some of
the agonizings that result from the obscurities engendered by
systematic thinking and stirred up by speculative inquiry, then
address yourself and your companion and ask him for a
definition of ‘Unbelief’. If he claims that the definition of
‘Unbelief’ is that which contradicts the Ash‘arite school, or the
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 89

Mu‘tazilite school, or the Hanbalite school, or any other school,

then know that he is a gullible, dim-witted fellow who is stifled
by his enslavement to blind following. In fact, he is blinder than
the blind. So do not waste your time trying to reform him. For it
would be enough to silence him that you compare his claim
with those of his opponents, since he will not find any difference
between him and the rest of those who blindly follow some
other school in opposition to him.
And it may be that, of all the schools, his patron (whom he
follows) is inclined toward the Ash‘arite school, holding that to
go against this school, even in the finest of details, is an
incontrovertible act of Unbelief. Ask him, though, how he came
to enjoy this monopoly over the truth, such that he could adjudge
(the likes of) al-Baqillani> to be an Unbeliever (kafir) because
the latter goes against him on the question of God’s possessing
the attribute of eternity, holding that this attribute is indistinct
from the essence of God. Why should al-Baqillani be more
deserving to be branded an Unbeliever for going against the
Ash‘arite school than the Ash‘arites would be for going against
al-Baqillani? Why should one of these parties enjoy a monopoly
over the truth to the exclusion of the other?
Is it on the basis of who preceded whom in time? If this be
the case, then al-Ash‘ari° was himself preceded by others like
the Mu‘tazilites. Let the truth, then, rest with precedence. Or is
it on the basis of one possessing more virtue and knowledge
than the other? But by what scale and by what measuring device
is this knowledge and virtue to be quantified, such that it would
be proper for him to claim that no one in existence is more
virtuous than the one he has chosen to follow?
If, on the other hand, it is permissible for al-Baqillani to go
against the Ash‘arite school, why should this be denied to
others? What is the difference between al-Baqillani and
al-Karabisi’ or al-Qalanisi® and others? On what basis do we
restrict this licence (to al-Baqillani)?
If he claims that the disagreement with al-Baqillani is really
only a disagreement over terminology as opposed to substance—
as some biased partisans have tried to insist through forced and
90 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

affected arguments, claiming that both parties are really in

agreement on the eternity of (God’s) existence and that the
disagreement over whether this eternity is consubstantial with
God’s essence or is an attribute added to and distinct from that
essence is really a minor disagreement that does not call for
either party to take a strong position against the other—then
why does he have such strong words for the Mu‘tazilite
regarding the latter’s negation of the divine attributes
(qua attributes) while fully acknowledging that God is knowing
and has knowledge of all things, and that He is powerful and
has power over all possibilities, his disagreement with the
Ash‘arites being simply over whether God is knowing and
powerful by His essence or by an attribute (viz., knowledge,
power) that is distinct from His essence? What is the difference
between these two disagreements? And what issue could be
more momentous and more serious than scholarly inquiry into
the negation versus the acknowledgment of the attributes of
God?
If he says,

I simply deem the Mu‘tazilite an Unbeliever because he claims that

knowledge, power, life, etc. emerge from a single essence, while
these things all differ from each: other both in terms of their
definition and their reality, and it is impossible for different realities
to be described as an undifferentiated unit or for a single essence to
represent them all,

then why does he not look askance at the Ash‘arite when the
latter says that speech (kalam) is an attribute distinct from essence
that attaches to the essence of God, while it remains a single
reality that manifests itself as Torah, Gospels, Psalms, and
Qur’an? Indeed, it includes commands, prohibitions, reports, and
inquiries; and all of these are different realities. And how could
they not be, while the definition of a report is ‘that which is
subject to being believed or disbelieved,’ while no such definition
applies to commands and prohibitions? How could these things
constitute a single reality that is both subject to and not subject to
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 91

being believed or disbelieved, which would amount to an attribute

and its opposite applying to a single entity?
Now, if he fumbles about trying to find answers to these
questions, or proves incapable of clarifying these matters, know
that he is not a thinker but a mere follower (muqallid). And
among the restrictions that go along with being a follower is
that one not take it upon oneself to address (scholarly) issues;
nor should others address one (about such issues), because (as a
follower) one is not capable of travelling the path of (sound)
rational argument. For were one capable of doing so, one would
not be a follower but one who is followed; one would be
someone’s imam, rather than the other way around.
So when a mere follower engages in (intellectual) argument,
this constitutes no more than prurient meddling on his part. And
one who indulges him is like a man who tries to beat (horseshoes
out of) cold steel, or one who tries to restore to freshness what
time has already spoiled. But, alas, how can the perfume-
merchant restore to freshness what time has already ravaged?
If you are fair, you will probably know that one who gives
any particular thinker a monopoly over the truth is himself closer
to being guilty of both Unbelief and contradictoriness. As for
his being closer to Unbelief, this is because he puts this thinker
in the position of the Prophet, who alone is exempt from
committing errors (in doctrine), and through whom alone faith
(iman) obtains by agreeing with him and Unbelief obtains by
disagreeing with him. As for his being closer to contra-
dictoriness, this is because every thinker holds rational inquiry
to be a personal obligation, and that one should give assent only
to the results of his own rational inquiry, and that the results of
this inquiry constitute a (binding) proof (for him). But what is
the difference between one who says, ‘Follow me in my
doctrine,’ and one who says, ‘Follow me in both my doctrine
and my proof’? Is this not a contradiction?’
92 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

IV

After suffering all the contradictions of the various factions of

blind followers, you may desire to know the (true) definition of
‘Unbelief’. Know that a full explanation of this matter would be
quite long, and the means through which it might be fully
apprehended are quite subtle and elusive. But I will provide you
with a sound criterion which you should apply evenly across the
board, that it may serve to keep your inquiry focused (on the
real issue) and provide you with a means of avoiding the error
of condemning various groups as Unbelievers and of casting
aspersions on the people of Islam—however much their ways
may differ—while they hold fast to the statement, ‘There is no
god but God; Muhammad is His messenger,’ being sincere
therein and not categorically contradicting it in any way. Thus
I say:
‘Unbelief (Aufr)’ is to deem anything the Prophet brought to
be a lie. And ‘faith (iman)’ is to deem everything he brought to
be true. Thus, the Jew and the Christian are Unbelievers because
they deny the truthfulness of the Prophet*.'° Deists are all the
more Unbelievers because, in addition to our messenger, they
reject all of the messengers.'’ Atheists (dahriyiin) are even
moreso Unbelievers because, in addition to our messenger who
was sent to us, they reject the very God who sends the prophets
altogether.
Now, all of this is based on the fact that ‘Unbelief is a legal
designation (hukm shar‘t), like slavery and freedom, its
implication being the licitness of shedding the blood of one
(so designated)'* and passing a judgement upon him to the effect
that he will dwell in the Hellfire forever. And since this is a
legal designation, it can only be known on the basis of either an
explicit text from scripture (mass) or an analogy (giyas) drawn
from an explicit text. Now, there are explicit texts regarding the
(status of) Jews and Christians. Deists, Dualists, Crypto-infidels
(al-zanadiqa/s. zindiq), and Atheists are assigned the same status
on a fortiori grounds. And all of these parties are associationists
(mushrikin) inasmuch as all of them deem one or more of the
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 93

prophets to be a liar.'* Hence, every Unbeliever deems one or

more of the prophets to be a liar. And every one who deems one
or more of the prophets to be a liar is an Unbeliever. This is the
criterion that should be applied evenly across the board.

Vv

Know, however, that the simplicity of this criterion

notwithstanding, additional considerations—nay, the very crux
of the matter—lurk beneath its surface. For every group
accuses those who hold views contrary to its own of being
Unbelievers and of deeming the Prophet* to be a liar. The
Hanbalite, for example, brands the Ash‘arite an Unbeliever,
claiming that the latter deems the Prophet to be a liar in his
attribution of aboveness (al-fawq) and (a literal) mounting of
the Throne (al-istiwa’ ‘ala ‘I-‘arsh) to God. The Ash‘arite
brands the Hanbalite an Unbeliever, claiming the latter to be
an anthropomorphist (mushabbih) who deems the Prophet to
be a liar when he says (about God), ‘Nothing is anything like
Him’. The Ash‘arite brands the Mu‘tazilite an Unbeliever,
claiming that the Mu‘tazilite deems the Prophet to be a liar
when the latter informs us of the beatific vision (ru ’yat Allah),
and of God’s knowledge, power, and (other) attributes. The
Mu‘tazilite brands the Ash‘arite an Unbeliever, claiming that
(the latter’s) belief in the divine attributes constitutes (belief
in) a multiplicity of eternals and a denial of the truth of what
the Prophet taught in the way of monotheism (tawhid). And
nothing will free you from the likes of this dilemma save a
firm grasp of the meaning of ‘deeming to be a lie (takdhib)’
and ‘deeming to be true (tasdiq)’, and the reality of how these
designations apply to statements by the Prophet. But once this
becomes clear to you, so too will the extremism of those groups
that go around branding each other Unbelievers. And it is to
this end that I say:
‘Deeming to be true (or truthful)’ can apply to a statement
itself or to the author of a statement. And the reality of ‘deeming
to be true’ (as applies to assertions by the Prophet) is to
94 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

acknowledge the existence of everything whose existence the

Prophet* informed us of. ‘Existence’ (wujiid), however, is of
five levels. And it is only because of their obliviousness to this
fact that all of the groups accuse their adversaries of deeming
some or another aspect of what the Prophet taught to be a lie.
Existence, meanwhile, can be: 1) ontological (dhati); 2) sensory
(hissi); 3) conceptual (khayali); 4) noetic (‘aq/i); or 5) analogous
(shabahi). And no one who acknowledges the existence of what
the Prophet* informed us of on any of these five levels can be
said to be categorically deeming what the Prophet taught to be a
lie. Let us explain, however, these five levels and cite a few
examples (of the role they play) in figurative interpretation
(ta’wil).
Ontological existence: This refers to the real, concrete
existence of things (in the world) external to both the senses
and the mind. The senses and the mind, however, receive
impressions of these things, which process is referred to as
apprehension (idrak). This is like the existence of the heavens,
the earth, animals, and plants. This, in other words, is apparent
reality. Nay, this is the ‘existence’ known to most people, other
than which they know no existence.
Sensory existence: This refers to things that acquire form
through the visual power of the eye, while they have no
existence in the world outside the eye. They exist, in other
words, on the level of the senses and are particular to the one
whose senses grasp them, no one else sharing in their
apprehension. For example, a sleeping person, or even a
delirious person who is awake, may ‘see’ something, inasmuch
as the physical image ‘appears’ to him. This thing, however,
has no existence outside of this person’s senses, such that it
could be physically seen like all of the other things that exist in
the world outside the senses. On the other hand, beautiful images
resembling the essences of angels may appear to the prophets or
the saints (awliya’/s. wali) while the latter are fully awake and
healthy, just as they receive revelation (wahy) and inspiration
(i/ham) (respectively) in this state. Such people have the ability
to receive in a state of full wakefulness information regarding
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 95

the unseen (ghayb) that others can receive only in a state of

sleep. And this is due to the extreme purity of their inner natures,
as reflected, for example, in the statement of the Exalted, ‘And
he appeared to her as a fully constituted man’.!* This is similarly
reflected in the fact that the Prophet* saw Gabriel* on several
occasions. But he only saw him in his true form twice. Normally,
he would see him in any one of the many forms that he (Gabriel)
would assume.
This is also reflected in the fact that the Prophet* may be
seen by a person who is asleep. Indeed, the Prophet himself has
stated, ‘Whoever sees me in his sleep has actually seen me; for
Satan cannot assume my image.’'® None of this implies,
however, the transfer of his actual person from his grave in
Medina to the location of the sleeping person. Rather, this is
simply a matter of his image (being impressed) upon the senses
of the sleeping person.
Now, the reason and explanation behind all of this is quite
complex, and we have gone into detail about it in some of our
other works. But if you have difficulty believing what I have
stated here, you can certainly believe your own eyes. So try the
following: Take a live ember in which there is fire the size of a
dot; then quickly move it from side to side in a straight line. It.
will appear as a line of fire. Then, whirl it around in a quick
circular motion. It will appear as a circle of fire. Now, the line
and the circle are actually seen, but they only exist on the level
of your senses, not in the world outside your senses. For in each
case, what exists in the outside world is only the dot of fire. It
only becomes a (straight or circular) line as a consequence of
your motion, while in reality no line exists at all. Yet, such lines
appear to exist, absolutely, according to what you see.
Conceptual existence: This refers to the physical image of
things that are normally perceived through the senses in
instances where these things themselves are removed from the
reach of the senses. Thus, for example, even if you close your
eyes, you can produce the image of an elephant or a horse in
your mind, to the point that it would be as if you were actually
96 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

seeing it. The image exists, however, in all its fullness, only in
your brain, not‘in the outside world.
Noetic existence: This refers to instances where a thing
possesses a functional nature (rih),'’ an ipseity (hagiqa), and
an essence (ma‘na), but the mind (‘ag/) isolates its essence
without positing any physical image of it in the imagination
(khayal), the senses (hiss), or the outside world. For example,
one can perceive the physical image of a hand through the
senses; or one can simply conceptualize it (in the imagination).
‘Hand,’ however, also connotes an essence, which is its ipseity,
namely the ability to seize and strike. ‘The ability to seize and
strike,’ then, is the ‘noetic hand’. Similarly, ‘pen’ has a physical
image. But its ipseity is that via which knowledge is recorded.
This is what the mind extracts, without associating it with any
physical image of bamboo, wood, or any other material
belonging to those physical images (of a pen) that are
apprehended by the senses or the imagination.
Analogous existence: This refers to instances wherein a thing
itself does not exist, either as an image or in reality, either in
the outside world or in the senses (hiss), the imagination (khayal)
or the mind (‘aq/), but something analogous to it that possesses
some quality or attribute peculiar to it exists. This will become
more easily understood when I cite examples of it during the
discussion of figurative interpretation (ta wil).
These, then, are the levels on which things can be said to
exist.

VI

Now listen to some examples of these levels (of existence) as

they apply to the enterprise of figurative interpretation.
As for ontological existence, it requires no example. For this
is existence according to the apparent meaning of the term
devoid of any figurative interpretation. This is simply real
existence in the absolute, such as when the Prophet* informs us
of the Throne (‘arsh), the ottoman (kursi), and the seven
heavens. These are understood according to the apparent
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 97

meaning of these terms, devoid of any figurative interpretation.

For these corporeal entities exist in their own right, whether
they are apprehended by the senses or the imagination or not.
As for sensory existence, there are many examples of this in
figurative interpretation. I will limit myself, however, to two.
The first is the statement of the Prophet*: ‘Death will be brought
forth on the Day of Judgement in the form of a black and white
ram and slaughtered between Paradise and Hell.’!® Now,
whoever holds it to be a logically proven fact that death is an
accident (‘arad)—or the absence of an accident [i.e., life]—and
that it is impossible for accidents to turn into bodies, will
interpret this report to mean that the people who are present on
the Day of Judgement will see this event and believe that the
slaughtered animal is death. This, however, will exist as a fact
only to their senses, not in the outside world. But this will bring
them certainty that death is no longer a reality, since nothing
can be expected of a thing once it has been slaughtered. As for
those for whom the impossibility (of accidents turning into
bodies) is not a logically proven fact, perhaps they will believe
that death is actually transformed into a ram, after which time it
is slaughtered.
The second example is the Prophet’s* statement: ‘Paradise
was presented to me inside this wall.’!? Now, whoever holds it
to be a logically proven fact that (whole) bodies do not intersect
each other and that the smaller body cannot encompass the
larger will interpret this statement to mean that Paradise was
not actually transported to this wall but that the image of
Paradise being in the wall presented itself to the Prophet’s
senses, such that it became as if he was actually seeing this.
And it is not at all impossible for a large thing to appear in a
small body, as one sees the sky in a small mirror. This ‘seeing’,
however, (by the Prophet) is different from simply imagining
the image of Paradise. For, there is a difference between seeing
the image of the sky in a mirror, on the one hand, and closing
one’s eyes and apprehending the image of the sky in the mirror
through the use of one’s imagination, on the other.
98 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

As for conceptual existence, an example of this would be the

Prophet’s* statement: ‘As if I were looking at Jonah, the son of
Matthew, wearing two wide-striped garments with short fringes,
saying, “At your command,” to which the mountains would
respond, and God would answer, “At your command,
O Jonah”.’*° This is obviously a reference to an image unfolding
in his imagination, since the actual existence of this event
preceded the existence of the Prophet* and had long passed into
non-existence. Thus, it was not in existence at the time (of the
Prophet’s statement). Now, it would not be unreasonable to say
that this image appeared to his sense (of sight) to the point that
he came to ‘see’ it, just as a sleeping person sees images.
However, his statement, ‘As if I were looking...,’ gives the
impression that no real seeing took place, rather only something
tantamount to seeing. At any rate, the aim here is to demonstrate
my point by way of representative example, not to focus on this
(particular) image. In sum, everything that appears to the
imagination can conceivably appear to the eye, which is what
qualifies this as (a species of) ‘seeing’. And rarely is the
impossibility of actually seeing a thing that has been
conceptualized in the imagination established through any
definitive logical proof.
As for noetic existence, there are many examples of this. But
content yourself (for the time being) with two. The first is the
Prophet’s* statement: ‘Whoever exits the Hellfire will be given
a portion of Paradise ten times the size of the world.’?! Now,
the apparent meaning of this statement indicates that this portion
is ten times the size of the world in length, width, and area, this
comparison being grounded in the senses or the imagination. To
this, however, one might object in amazement, ‘Paradise is in
the heavens, as has been indicated by the apparent meaning of
so many (scriptural) reports. How can the sky accommodate ten
times the size of the world, while the sky is itself part of the
world?’ Now, one versed in figurative interpretation would quell
this amazement by suggesting the following: What is intended
here is a semantic (ma ‘nawi), noetic comparison, not a sensory
(hissi) or conceptual (khayali) one. For example, one says, ‘This
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 99

precious stone is equal to this horse many times over,’ by which

one refers to its monetary value and its essence, which the mind
apprehends by abstraction, not its area, which is apprehended
via the senses or the imagination.
The second example is the Prophet’s* statement: ‘God
fermented the clay of (which He created) Adam in His hand for
forty mornings.’” Here he attributes to God a hand. But those
who hold it to be logically impossible for God’s hand to be a
physical organ that can be apprehended through the senses or
the imagination will deem this hand to be an immaterial, noetic
hand. That is to say, they will affirm the essence, ipseity, and
functional nature of ‘hand’ rather than its physical form. Now,
the essence and functional nature of ‘hand’ is represented in
that by which one seizes and strikes, does, gives and withholds
things. And God the Exalted gives and withholds through the
medium of His angels, as the Prophet* has said: ‘The first thing
God created was the intellect, after which He said, “Through
you I will give and withhold”.’?? Now, it is impossible for the
meaning of ‘intellect’ here to be that accident (commonly
regarded as the faculty for knowing), as the speculative
theologians (al-mutakallimiin) believe. For it is impossible for
an accident to be the first thing created. Rather, this would have
to be a reference to the essence of some angel who is called
‘intellect’ because he apprehends things directly by his nature
and essence without the intermediary of learning. Or perhaps
this angel could be called ‘pen,’ in consideration of his role in
inscribing the various forms of knowledge onto the tabulae
(alwah/s. lawh) of the hearts of the prophets, saints (awliya’/s.
wali), and other angels, either by way of revelation (wahy) or
inspiration (i/ham). For it has been reported in another hadith,
‘The first thing God created was the pen.’* And if what was
being referred to here was not also intellect, these two hadith
would pose an obvious contradiction.
It is perfectly possible, on the other hand, for a single entity
to have several names, depending on the perspective from which
it is viewed. Thus, this angel might be referred to as ‘intellect’
for the reasons we stated above. But he might be referred to as
100 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

‘an angel’ from the perspective of his relationship with God as

the medium through which God communicates with His
creatures. From the perspective of his action of inscribing the
various forms of knowledge (upon people’s hearts) via revelation
or inspiration, he might be referred to as ‘a pen’. This is like
Gabriel’s being called ‘a spirit,’ from the perspective of his
(immaterial) essence, ‘a confidant,’ from the perspective of all
the secrets entrusted to him, ‘capable one (dhi mirra),’
considering his ability, ‘extremely powerful,’ considering the
completeness of his power, ‘firmly established at the Throne,’
from the perspective of his rank in closeness to God, and
‘obeyed,’ considering that he exercises authority over some of
the angels.
The point in all of this is that anyone who subscribes to (any
of the above-cited figurative interpretations of pen or hand)
affirms the existence of a noetic pen or hand, not a pen or hand
perceived through the senses (hiss) or conceived of in the
imagination (khayal). Similar to this is the case of one who
holds ‘hand’ to refer to one of God’s attributes such as power or
some other attribute, as the speculative theologians do, though
the latter differ as to which attribute is actually intended.
As for analogous existence, an example of this would be
anger, or longing or joy or patience or any of those sentiments
attributed to God the Exalted in reports that have come down to
us. For the reality of anger, for example, is the boiling of blood
in the heart engendered by a desire to satisfy one’s thirst for
vengeance. And this inevitably entails suffering a flaw and
experiencing a measure of pain. Thus, those who hold it to be
logically impossible for God to experience anger, so defined, as
an ontological, sensorial, conceptual, or noetic reality, will
interpret anger to refer to some other attribute which produces
the same result as anger, such as the will to punish. And while
will may be unrelated to anger in terms of its essence, it does
relate to an attribute that goes along with anger and to one of
the effects that results therefrom, namely the infliction of pain.
These, then, are the levels of figurative interpretation.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 101

VII

Know that everyone who interprets a statement of the Lawgiver

in accordance with one of the preceding levels (of existence)
has deemed such statements to be true. ‘Deeming a statement to
be a lie (takdhib),’ on the other hand, is to deny its
correspondence to any of these levels and to claim that it
represents no reality at all, that it is a pure lie, and that the
Lawgiver’s aim in delivering it was simply to deceive people or
to promote the (putative) common good (masi/aha). This is pure
Unbelief and masked-infidelity (zandaqa). Other than this,
however, it is improper to brand as an Unbeliever anyone who
engages in figurative interpretation, as long as he observes the
Rule of Figurative Interpretation (Qanin al-ta’wil), which we
will elaborate below. And how could it be proper to brand such
figurative interpreters Unbelievers, while there is not a party
among the people of Islam who do not find themselves
compelled to engage in figurative interpretation? Indeed, among
those most disdainful of figurative interpretation was Ahmad b.
Hanbal, may God show him mercy. And the most remote and
exotic forms of figurative interpretations are those in which a
statement is treated allegorically or metaphorically, these
corresponding to noetic (‘ag/i) and analogous (shabahi)
existence, respectively. Yet the Hanbalite is compelled to engage
in this practice, and indeed openly advocates positions based
thereupon. Indeed, I heard trusted men among their leaders in
Baghdad say that Ahmad b. Hanbal, may God show him mercy,
explicitly stated that he figuratively interpreted three hadiths,
though he limited this practice to these three alone. The first
was the statement of the Prophet*: ‘The Black Stone is the right
(hand) of God on earth.’?> The second was the Prophet’s*
statement: ‘The heart of the faithful (galb al-mu min) is between
two of the All-Merciful’s fingers.’”° The third was the statement
of the Prophet,* ‘Indeed, I find the breath of the All-Merciful
(nafas al-rahman) coming from the direction of Yemen.’”’ Now,
notice how he figuratively interpreted these statements when he
deemed their apparent meaning to be logically impossible. Thus,
102 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL.TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

he said: The right hand is customarily kissed for the purpose of

drawing near to its owner; the Black Stone is similarly kissed
for the purpose of drawing near to God. Thus, the Black Stone
is like the right hand (of God), not in its essence nor in any
attribute of its essence, but in one of its non-essential
accoutrements, on the basis of which it is referred to as a right
hand. Now, this corresponds to the level of existence that we
referred to as analogous existence (al-wujid al-shabahi). And
this represents the most remote form of figurative interpretation.
Yet, notice how the man most disdainful of figurative
interpretation was compelled to take recourse to this very form.
Similarly, when he deemed it impossible for the senses to
apprehend the ‘two fingers’ of God the Exalted, since upon
checking one’s breast one does not find any two fingers, he
figuratively interpreted ‘two fingers’ to refer to the functional
nature (ruh) of fingers, deeming them thereby to be noetic
fingers. That is to say, the functional nature of fingers is to
facilitate the turning and altering of things. And the human
heart is poised between the grip of the angels and the grip of
Satan, through whom God the Exalted turns the hearts of
humans. These two entities are thus nicknamed ‘the two fingers’.
Now, Ahmad b. Hanbal, may God be pleased with him,
simply limited himself to figuratively interpreting these three
hadiths because he deemed the apparent meaning of only these
three to be logically impossible. But this was because he was
not among those who were versed in speculative rationalism
(al-nazar al-‘aqgli). Had he been so, the logical impossibility of
other reports, such as those implying (God’s) aboveness and
others which he did not interpret figuratively, would have also
appeared to him. Indeed, it was only due to their having delved
more deeply into this science that the Ash‘arites and the
Mu'tazilites went beyond this to subject the apparent meanings
of many other texts to figurative interpretation.
Now, the closest people to the Hanbalites as far as their
understanding of matters of the Afterlife (umir al-akhira)® is
concemed are the Ash‘arites, may God grant them success. They
endorse the apparent meaning of most reports about the Afterlife,
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 103

with only a few exceptions. The Mu‘tazilites, meanwhile, are

more prone to getting caught up in (all types of) figurative
interpretation. Yet even they, I mean the Ash‘arites, find
themselves compelled to resort to figurative interpretation in
treating a number of reports (about the Afterlife), such as the
case we cited above regarding the Prophet’s* statement, ‘Death
will be brought forth in the form of a black and white ram,’ and
such as (their treatment of) the reports on ‘weighing deeds’ in
scales, which they interpret figuratively, saying that the scrolls
(containing the records) of deeds are (what will actually be)
weighed, God creating in them weight corresponding to the
magnitude of the deeds performed.” This, however, entails
having recourse to (an affirmation of) analogous existence
(al-wujiid al-shabahi), which, again, is quite remote. For the
scrolls are corporeal bodies upon which is written encoded data
corresponding to the deeds, which are themselves accidents
(a ‘rad/s. ‘arad). That is to say, what is actually weighed is not
the deeds themselves but the corporeal mass upon which the
encoded data corresponding to the deeds is written.
The Mu‘tazilite, on the other hand, figuratively interprets
‘scale’ itself, making it a synecdochic reference to a cause
through which the magnitude of everyone’s deeds will be made
known to them. And this is actually less arbitrary than the
figurative interpretation involving the weighing of scrolls.
The aim in all of this, however, is not to judge either of these
interpretations to be correct. Rather, the aim is simply to make
you aware that every party, even those who go to extremes in
holding to the apparent meanings of texts, finds itself compelled
to figurative interpretation. Otherwise, they would end up going
beyond all bounds of stupidity and feigned ignorance, affirming,
for example, that the Black Stone is literally the right hand
(of God), or that death, even if it is an accident, transforms
(itself) and turns into a ram by way of transfiguration (ingilab),
or that deeds, even if they are accidents that have passed into
non-existence, are transferred to scales that end up weighing
accidents possessed of weight! And whoever ends up at this
level of ignorance has cast off the yoke of reason.
104 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Vill

Listen now to the Rule of Figurative Interpretation. You already

know that all of the parties agree on the aforementioned five
levels of figurative interpretation,*® and that none of these levels
falls within the scope of ‘deeming a statement to be a lie’. They
also agree, however, that the permissibility of engaging in
figurative interpretation is contingent upon having established
the logical impossibility of the apparent meaning (zahir) of a
text. The first level of apparent meaning corresponds to
ontological (dhati) existence. Whenever this is conceded, the
remaining levels are entailed. If this proves (logically)
impossible, however, one moves to the level of sensory existence
(hissi), for it too embraces those levels below it. If this proves
impossible, one moves to the level of conceptual (khayali) or
noetic (‘agli) existence. And if this proves impossible, one
moves to the level of analogous, allegorical existence (al-wujiid
al-shabahi al-majazi).
Now, no one is permitted to move from one level (of
interpretation) to a level beneath it without being compelled by
logical proof (burhan). Thus, in reality, the differences among
the various parties revert to (differences regarding) logical
proofs. In other words, the Hanbalite says that there is no logical
proof affirming the impossibility of aboveness being the domain
of the Creator. And the Ash‘arite says that there is no logical
proof affirming the impossibility of the beatific vision. In other
words, it is as if each party is simply dissatisfied with the
justification adduced by its opponent and does not deem it to
constitute a definitive proof. But however the matter may be,
neither party should brand its opponent an Unbeliever simply
because its deems the latter to be mistaken in what it holds to be
a logical proof. Granted, one party may hold the other to be
misguided (dall) or to be guilty of unsanctioned innovation
(mubtadi‘). As for being misguided, this may be said inasmuch
as they veer away from what the one (judging them) holds to be
the right path. As for being guilty of unsanctioned innovation,
this may be said inasmuch’as they (may be understood to have)
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 105

innovated a doctrine that the Pious Ancestors were not known

to have openly advocated, it being well-known, for example,
that the Pious Ancestors held that God will be seen in the
Hereafter. Thus, for anyone to say that He will not be seen is
for them to be guilty of unsanctioned innovation. So is it for
them to advocate openly a figurative interpretation of the beatific
vision. In fact, if it should appear to one that the meaning of
this beatific vision is simply a seeing that takes place in the
heart, one should neither disclose nor mention this, because the
Ancestors did not mention it.
At this point, however, the Hanbalite might say: Affirming
the aboveness (al-fawq) of God is well-known among the
Ancestors, as is the fact that none of them ever said that the
Creator of the universe is neither connected to nor disconnected
from the universe, nor (that He is) neither within nor outside of ,
it. Nor (did they say) that the six directions*! are devoid of
Him, or that His relationship to the direction of up is like His
“relationship to the direction of down. All of these statements
constitute, therefore, unsanctioned innovations, since
‘unsanctioned innovation’ (bid‘a) refers to the origination of a
doctrine that has not been handed down on the authority of the
Ancestors.
It is here that it should be made clear to you that there are
two vantage-points (from which these matters might be
considered).
The first is that of the masses (‘awamm al-khalq). The proper
thing for them to do is to follow (established doctrine) and to
desist forthwith from altering the apparent meanings of texts.
They should beware of innovating proclamations of figurative
interpretations that were not so proclaimed by the Companions;
and they should close the door at once to raising questions
about such things. They should refrain from delving into
speculative discussions and inquiries and from following the
ambiguous passages of the Qur’an and Sunna. Indeed, it was
related in this regard on the authority of ‘Umar, may God be
pleased with him, that a man once asked him about the meaning
of two (apparently) contradictory verses, to which ‘Umar
106 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

responded by mounting him with a whip. And it was related on

the authority of ‘Malik, God show him mercy, that he was once
asked about mounting (the Throne), to which he responded:
‘(The fact of) mounting is known; acknowledging it is
obligatory; its modality is unknown; and asking about it is
unsanctioned innovation.’ .
The second vantage-point is that of the speculative
theoreticians (al/-nuzzar) who come to harbour misgivings about
inherited theological doctrines handed down from the past. Their
investigations should not go beyond what is absolutely
necessary. And they should only abandon the apparent meaning
of a text upon being compelled by some definitive logical proof.
Moreover, none of them should condemn the others as
Unbelievers because he holds the latter to be mistaken in what
they believe to be a logical proof; for rendering such judgements
is no trifling matter that is easily substantiated. Instead, let them
establish among themselves a mutually agreed-upon criterion
for determining the validity of logical proofs that enjoys the
recognition of them all. For if they do not agree on the scale by
which a thing is to be measured, they will not be able to
terminate disputes over its weight. We have cited the five
(probative) scales in our book, al-Qistas al-mustaqim.* These
are the scales regarding the validity of which it is inconceivable
that anyone disagree, assuming that they have been properly
understood. Indeed, everyone who understands these scales
acknowledges them to be an absolute means to certainty. And
for those who have mastered them, dispensing and exacting
fairness, exposing (the subtleties of difficult) matters, and
terminating disputes become matters of ease.
None of this precludes, of course, the possibility that the
various parties may (continue to) differ with each other. For
such may result from a failure of some of them to satisfy all the
prerequisites (to the use of these scales). Or it may be due to
their abandoning these scales and measures during the course of
inquiry in favour of a strict reliance upon natural talent and
disposition, like one who, after mastering the metres of poetry,
returns to relying upon his innate sense of taste in order to
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 107

escape the drudgery of having to calibrate the metre of each

individual line. Such a person will be prone to making mistakes.
Or it may be due to differences in (the level of mastery of) the
various sciences relied upon in forming the propositions of
logical syllogisms. Indeed, among the sciences that are basic to
logical syllogisms are empirical (tajribi) sciences, sciences that
are based on diffuse and congruent reports (tawdaturi), and other
sciences. And people differ in terms of their experience and
exposure to diffusely congruent reports from the past. Indeed,
one person may deem a report to be diffuse and congruent
while another person does not; and one person may experience
a thing that another does not. Or it may be due to a confusion
between suppostitious (wahmi) and rational (‘ag/i) assumptions.
Or it may be due to the tendency to confuse words that are
widespread, commonly used, and positive in meaning, with a
priori categories and first principles, as we have explained in
detail in our book, Mihakk al-nazar.**
In the end, however, if they master these scales and carefully
perfect their use, they will be able to identify mistakes with
ease, assuming, that is, that they are willing to abandon
obstinacy.

IX

There are, on the other hand, people. who rush to figurative

interpretation under the influence of speculative presumptions
rather than on the basis of definitive logical proofs. Even these
people, however, should not in every instance be immediately
branded Unbelievers. Rather, one should observe. If their
figurative interpretation pertains to a matter that is not connected
with the basic principles and requirements of creed, we do not
brand them Unbelievers. An example of this would be the
statement of some Sufis to the effect that what is meant by
(the prophet) Abraham’s* seeing the stars, moon, and sun, along
with his statement, ‘This is my lord,’** is not the apparent
meaning of these things but rather angelic, luminous essences,
whose luminosity is noetic rather than perceptual and whose
108 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

essences are characterized by ascending levels of perfection, the

level of disparity: between them being like the level of disparity
between the stars, the sun, and the moon.** They support this on
the argument that Abraham* was too noble to have to see a
body disappear before coming to the belief that it could not be
his god. Had this body not disappeared (they argue), do you
think that he would have taken it to be his god, despite his
(prior) knowledge of the impossibility of godhood resting with
created bodies? They also ask, ‘How was it possible for the
stars to be the first thing he saw, when the sun is more prominent
(than the stars) and is (usually) the first (celestial body) a person
sees?’ And they point to the fact that God the Exalted mentioned
first, ‘In this way we show Abraham the hidden realities of the
heavens and the earth...,’*° after which time Abraham is cited
as having spoken the words in the aforementioned verse. How
was it possible (they argue) for him to suppose (that these things
were his Lord) after the hidden realities had already been
revealed to him?
All of these arguments are based on speculative presumption
(zann), not logical proof (burhan). As for their statement, ‘He
was too noble to...,’ it has been said that Abraham was a youth
at the time. And there is nothing incredible about one who is to
become a prophet entertaining a notion like this in his youth
only to abandon it shortly thereafter.*’ Nor is there anything
incredible about his taking the disappearance (of things) to be
more of a proof of temporality than are proportionment (tagdir)
and corporeality (jismiya).
As for his seeing the stars first, it has been related that he had
secluded himself in a cave as a youth and emerged (for the first
time) at night.
As for the Exalted having stated first, ‘In this way we show
Abraham the hidden realities of the heavens and the earth... ,’>
He may simply have mentioned the final stages of this ordeal
only to return to the beginning stages subsequently. At any rate,
all of these are speculative arguments that are taken to constitute
logical proof (burhan) by people who know neither what logical
proofs really are nor what is-required to sustain them.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 109

This is representative of the kind of figurative interpretation

in which these people engage. They even figuratively interpret
‘staff and ‘shoes’ in God’s statement, ‘Take off your shoes,’
and “Throw down what you have in your right hand.’#? And
perhaps they should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding
such interpretations that are not connected with basic principles
of creed, just as we treat (differences over) logical proofs in
connection with (questions on) basic principles of creed. They
should be neither branded Unbelievers nor deemed guilty of
unsanctioned innovation. Granted, if opening the door to this
(kind of interpretive activity) leads to confusing the minds of
the masses, then charges of unsanctioned innovation should be
levelled specifically against those who engage in this activity
regarding those views of theirs that have not been handed down
on the authority of the Pious Ancestors.
Similar to the above is the view of some of the Batinites*! to
the effect that the ‘calf? of the Samaritan” is a figure of speech,
since it is not likely that a large population of people would be
devoid of rational individuals who knew that a thing fashioned
from gold could not be a god. This too is speculative. For it is
not at all impossible for a large group of people to come to such
a conclusion, as is attested to by (the existence of entire
communities of) idol worshippers. The fact that this is rare
yields no certainty whatever (of its impossibility or non-
existence).
As for that material that is connected to the fundamental
principles of creed, anyone who alters the apparent meaning of
a text without a definitive logical proof must be branded an
Unbeliever, like those who deny the resurrection of the body
and the occurrence of sentient punishment in the Hereafter on
the basis of speculative presumptions, suppositions, and assumed
improbabilities in the absence of any definitive logical proof.
Such persons must be branded Unbelievers, absolutely. For there
is no logical proof to attest to the impossibility of souls being
returned to bodies. Moreover, public proclamations of such
beliefs are extremely detrimental to religion. Thus, everyone
110 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

who attaches himself to such beliefs must be branded an

Unbeliever. And this includes most of the philosophers.
Similarly, those who say that God the Exalted knows nothing
other than Himself must be branded Unbelievers. Likewise with
those who say that He knows only universals, concrete
particulars connected with individual things and events falling
outside His knowledge. For all of this constitutes an act of
deeming what the Prophet* taught to be a lie, absolutely. It has
nothing to do with what we mentioned regarding the different
levels of figurative interpretation. For the evidence contained in
the Qur’an and the reports (handed down from the Prophet)
teaching of the resurrection of bodies and of God having
knowledge of the concrete particulars affecting individuals are
too numerous to accommodate figurative interpretation.
Moreover, the philosophers admit that they are not engaged in
figurative interpretation. Instead, they say: Since it is in the
interest of the people to believe in the resurrection of bodies,
because of the inability of their minds to grasp the meaning of a
noetic resurrection (ma ‘ad ‘aqli), and since it is in their interest
to believe that God the Exalted knows what befalls them and
that He watches over them so that this can generate hope and
fear in their hearts, it was permissible for the Messenger* to
give them this understanding. And anyone whose aim it is to
improve the condition of others by telling them that which
promotes their interests cannot (really) be deemed a liar, even if
what he teaches them is factually untrue.
This view of theirs is absolutely false, for it amounts to an
explicit claim that the Prophet* lied, followed by an attempt to
cover this up with an excuse that would effectively deny that
what he did was properly an act of lying. But the office of
prophethood must be raised above such depravity. For
truthfulness and the efficacy of reforming people through truth
negates any need for lying.
This view of theirs represents, however, only the first level
of masked infidelity (zandaqa). And this is a level that falls
between Mu‘tazilism and masked infidelity in the absolute
(al-zandaga al-mutlaga).* Indeed, the approach of the
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 111

Mu‘tazilites comes close to that of the philosophers, with one

exception, namely, that the Mu‘tazilites do not hold it to be
permissible for the Prophet* to lie, on the basis of such
(aforementioned) excuses. Instead, they figuratively interpret the
apparent meaning of scripture whenever it appears to them to
contradict some logical proof. The philosopher, on the other
hand, in going beyond the apparent meaning of scripture, does
not confine himself to texts that might accommodate figurative
interpretation, obvious or remote. As for (the above-mentioned)
masked infidelity in the absolute (al-zandaga al-mutlaqa), it
denies the resurrection in toto, on the level of noetic and
perceptual reality. And it denies that the universe has a Creator
at all, categorically and straightaway.
As for affirming the resurrection as a type of noetic reality
devoid of sentient pleasures and pain, and affirming the
existence of the Creator while denying that He has knowledge
of particulars, this is masked infidelity qualified by some
recognition of the truthfulness of the prophets. And it appears to
me, and knowledge rests with God, that those who hold such
views are the people referred to by the Prophet* in his statement:
‘My community will divide into over seventy sects; all of them
will enter Paradise except the Crypto-infidels.’*“ This refers to
a sect (of ostensibly Muslim infidels), according to the literal
wording of the hadith in some of its narrations. For the literal
wording of the hadith indicates that he was referring to the
Crypto-infidels from among his community, inasmuch as he
said, ‘My community will divide...’ Now, anyone who does not
acknowledge his prophethood is not from his community. And
those who deny the resurrection and the existence of the Creator
outright do not acknowledge his prophethood. For they claim
that death is simply a pure privation (‘adam mahd) and that the
world has existed on its own from sempiternity without a creator.
They do not acknowledge the existence of God or the reality of
the Last Day, and they charge the prophets with intentional
deception. It is not possible, therefore, to include them in the
community. Thus, the meaning of ‘the Crypto-infidels of this
112 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

community’ must correspond to what we mentioned (regarding

ostensibly Muslim infidels).

Know that a full explanation of the grounds on which a person

may or may not be branded an Unbeliever would require a long
and detailed discussion covering all of the various doctrines and
schools of thought along with the proofs and pseudo-proofs
adduced by each, as well as the manner in which they depart
from the apparent meaning of scripture and the degree to which
they rely on figurative interpretation. Several volumes would
not be enough to cover all of this. Nor do I have time to explain
it all. So, for the time being, content yourself with a piece of
advice and a maxim.
As for the Advice, it is that you restrain your tongue, to the
best of your ability, from indicting the people who face Mecca
(on charges of Unbelief) as long as they say, ‘There is no god
but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God,’ without
categorically contradicting this. And for them to contradict this
categorically is for them to affirm the possibility that the
Prophet,* with or without an excuse, delivered lies. Indeed,
branding people Unbelievers is a serious matter. Remaining
silent, on the other hand, entails no liability at all.
As for the Maxim, it is that you know that speculative matters
(al-nazariyat) are of two types. One is connected with the
fundamental principles of creed, the other with secondary issues.
The fundamental principles are acknowledging the existence of
God, the prophethood of his Prophet, and the reality of the Last
Day. Everything else is secondary.
Know that there should be no branding any person an
Unbeliever over any secondary issue whatsoever, as a matter of
principle, with one exception: that such a person reject a
religious tenet that was learned from the Prophet* and passed
down via diffusely congruent channels (tawdatur). Even here,
however, regarding some matters he may simply be subject to
being deemed wrong, as is.done with legal issues. Or he may be
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA hd

subject to condemnation for unsanctioned innovation (bid<a),

such as with wrong ideas regarding the Caliphate and the status
of the Companions.
Know, however, that error regarding the status of the
Caliphate, whether or not establishing this office is a
(communal) obligation, who qualifies for it, and related matters,
cannot serve as grounds for condemning people as Unbelievers.
Indeed, Ibn Kaysan* denied that there was any religious
obligation to have a Caliphate at all; but this does not mean that
he must be branded an Unbeliever. Nor do we pay any attention
to those who exaggerate the matter of the Imamate and equate
recognition of the Imam with faith in God and His Messenger.
Nor do we pay any attention to those who oppose these people
and brand them Unbelievers simply on the basis of their doctrine
on the Imamate. Both of these positions are extreme. For neither
of the doctrines in question entails any claim that the Prophet*
perpetrated lies.
On the other hand, anyone who claims that the Prophet* lied
must be condemned as an Unbeliever, even if this claim of his
involves a secondary issue. Thus, for example, were someone to
say that the House at Mecca is not the Ka‘ba to which God
commanded people to make pilgrimage, this would constitute
an act of Unbelief. For this claim is contradicted by that which
has been established on the authority of the Prophet* via
diffusely congruent channels (tawatur). And were this person to
deny (in order to avoid censure) that the Prophet* ever gave any
explicit testimony to the effect that this very House was the
Ka‘ba, this would not avail him. Rather, we would know,
absolutely, that his denial was simply an act of stubbornness,
unless he happened to be newly converted to Islam and this
information had not yet reached him through diffusely congruent
channels. Likewise, a person who accuses ‘A’isha, may God be
pleased with her, of committing indecency, while the Qur’an
has clearly established her innocence, would be guilty of
Unbelief.** For such claims can only be maintained either by
deeming the Prophet to have lied or by denying (the authority
of) diffuse congruence (tawatur). And while a person may deny
114 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

(the authority of) diffuse congruence with his tongue, he cannot

ignore the knowledge it produces in his heart.
To be sure, were a person to deny the truth of an isolated
report (khabar ahadi), there would be no duty to brand him an
Unbeliever. Were he to deny, on the other hand, that upon which
there was unanimous consensus (ijma‘), his case would be
unclear. For knowledge of whether or not consensus is itself a
definitive proof is fraught with ambiguities the likes of which
only those who have mastered the discipline of legal theory
(usil al-figh) can bring into relief. Indeed, al-Nazzam*’ denied
the status of consensus as a valid proof altogether. Thus, the
status of consensus as a valid proof is itself disputed (mukhtalaf
fih). This, then, is the ruling regarding secondary issues.
As for the three fundamental principles (i.e., God, the Prophet,
and the Last Day) and those texts that have been transmitted via
diffuse congruence and are not in and of themselves open to
figurative interpretation and for which one cannot conceive of
any logical proofs that would contradict their content, to
contradict these is to say that they constitute lies, pure and
simple, as, for example, with the resurrection of bodies, Paradise,
Hell, and God’s knowledge of particulars, as we cited earlier.
Regarding those texts, however, that are open to figurative
interpretation, albeit even remote allegorical interpretations, here
we examine the logical proof (adduced to justify the figurative
interpretation). If it is definitive it must be accepted. But if
divulging this to the masses poses a threat, because of their
inability to understand it, then to divulge this would constitute
an unsanctioned innovation (bid‘a). If, on the other hand, the
logical proof is not definitive but gives rise to a preponderance
of probability while not posing any known threat to religion,
such as (that underlying) the Mu‘tazilites’ negation of the
beatific vision, then this constitutes an unsanctioned innovation,
not an act of Unbelief. As for those matters that appear to pose
a threat to religion, determining their (legal) status is subject to
scholarly discretion (ijtihad) and speculative inquiry. They may
constitute a basis for branding a person an Unbeliever, and they
may not.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 115

Included among such matters would be the claims of some

who style themselves Sufis to the effect that they have reached
a state between themselves and God wherein they are no longer
obligated to pray, and that drinking wine, devouring state funds,
_and other forms of disobedience are rendered licit to them. Such
people, without doubt, must be executed, even if there remains
some question as to whether they will abide in the Hellfire
forever. Indeed, executing one of these people is better than
killing a hundred (open) Unbelievers, because the harm they
bring to religion is greater (than that caused by the latter), and
because they open doors to libertinism that can never be closed.
In fact, the harm these people cause is greater than that caused
by those who advocate libertinism outright. For the latters’ open
Unbelief generally discourages people from listening to them.
As for these people, they destroy the religious law through the
religious law itself by claiming that they do nothing more than
limit the scope of general injunctions by restricting general
religious duties to those who have not reached the level of
religiosity that they have reached. They may even claim that
their involvement in all kinds of acts of disobedience is only
apparent, while in reality they are innocent of this. As a result,
however, all kinds of miscreants take to wrapping themselves in
similar claims. And in this way the bonds of religion are undone.
One should not think, incidentally, that either branding a
person an Unbeliever or its negation must be based on certainty
in every case. On the contrary, ‘Unbelief’ is a legal designation
(hukm shar‘) that refers to 1) a person’s loss of property rights;
2) the licitness of shedding his blood; and 3) his dwelling in the
Hellfire forever.” As such, the basis upon which it is established
is the same as that upon which the rest of the rules of the
religious law are established: sometimes they are based on
certainty; sometimes on a preponderance of probability; and
sometimes on sources to which one cannot fully commit either
way. And whenever one finds oneself unable to commit (to his
would-be source), he should refrain from branding a person an
Unbeliever.*° Indeed, rushing to brand people Unbelievers is
the habit of those whose natures have been overrun by ignorance.
116 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Having said this much, we must draw your attention to

another Maxim, namely, that those who contradict scripture may
do so by contradicting texts that have been handed down via
diffusely congruent channels while claiming that they are simply
interpreting these figuratively. Meanwhile, their figurative
interpretations have no basis in language, either as obvious or
as remote figurative interpretations. This is Unbelief; and those
who engage in this are saying that scripture contains lies, even
if they claim that they are simply engaging in figurative
interpretation.
An example of this would be what I have seen in the writings
of one of the Batinites to the effect that God the Exalted is one
in the sense that He gives oneness and creates it, that He is
knowing in the sense that He gives knowledge to others and
creates it, and that He exists in the sense that He brings others
into existence. As for His being one in essence, and existing
and knowing in the sense of being characterized by these
attributes, this he held to be false. Now, this is Unbelief, plain
and simple. For interpreting ‘The One’ to mean ‘bringing
oneness into existence’ has no basis whatever in figurative
interpretation; nor does the Arabic language in any way
accommodate this. Indeed, if the creator of oneness could be
called ‘creator’ because he created oneness, he could be called
‘three’ or ‘four’ because he created these numbers as well. These
doctrines and their likes constitute acts of deeming scripture to
contain lies dressed up in the guise of figurative interpretation.

XI

By now you should understand, based on the aforementioned

examples, that investigating suspected instances of Unbelief
entails (at least) the following:
1) Investigating whether the text of scripture whose apparent
meaning has been abandoned is open to figurative interpretation
or not. If it is, is it open to obvious or remote figurative
interpretation? And knowing what is and what is not open to
figurative interpretation is not an easy matter. On the contrary,
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 17

the only people who can make such determinations are those
who are proficient and well-versed in the (Arabic) language,
knowledgeable of its fundamental structures, and well-
acquainted with the customs of the Arabs in using metaphors
and figures of speech and the various ways in which they
construct similes.
2) Investigating whether the abandoned text was an isolated
report, or one whose validity was established on the basis of
diffuse congruence (tawdatur), or one whose validity rests on
mere consensus. If it is established on the basis of diffuse
congruence, were all of the conditions of diffuse congruence
actually fulfilled? Indeed, a report that is simply widely known
(mustafid) may be mistakenly thought to be diffusely congruent.
By definition, however, ‘diffuse congruence’ means that a report
is not open to any doubt, such as obtains in the case of
knowledge of the existence of the prophets and commonly
known countries and the like. Moreover, it must remain diffusely
congruent over the ages, generation after generation, going all
the way back to the time of the Prophet. Is it conceivable that
the number of transmitters required to sustain diffuse congruence
could have fallen below the required level during any of these
generations, while the very impossibility of such an occurrence
is one of the requirements of diffuse congruence to begin with,
such as obtains in the case of the Qur’an? As for (texts) other
than the Qur’an, making such a determination is extremely
difficult. And only those who study the books of history, the
conditions of bygone generations, the books of hadith, the status
and conditions of the transmitters of reports, as well as their
objectives in transmitting the doctrines they transmit, can
successfully undertake such a task. For the number required to
sustain diffuse congruence may obtain in every generation
without this giving rise to knowledge. For it is conceivable for a
large number of people to be bound by ties of mutual interest,
especially following the setting in of partisanship (ta ‘assub)
among the advocates of the various schools of thought. Thus,
for example, due to the intensity of their mutual interest to
sustain and follow their lies, you see the Shi‘ites claiming the
118 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

existence of a text designating ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, may God be

pleased with him, as Imam and successor to the Prophet, simply
because such a text has been circulated and handed down among
them via diffuse congruence. Meanwhile, an abundance of
material contradicting their claims has been handed down via
diffuse congruence among their opponents.
As for those reports whose validity rests upon consensus,
establishing this is one of the most allusive of things. For a
precondition for affirming consensus is that those whose voices
make it up (ahl al-hall wa al-‘aqd) gather in a single place and
explicitly express their unanimous agreement, then continue in
this agreement—for a period, according to some, or up until the
close of that generation, according to others. Or a Caliph may
write to the various districts to gather the responsa of the jurists
within a specified period of time, such that their views add up
to an explicit unanimous agreement and it becomes impossible
for them to go back on this or to fall into disagreement
subsequently.
Even here, however, there is some question as to whether
one who subsequently contradicts this agreement is to be
branded an Unbeliever. For there are some who say that, since
it was permissible for him to disagree during the period in which
agreement was reached, their mutual recognition of each other’s
views is simply interpreted to constitute a consensus of
opinion.*! This, however, does not preclude the possibility of
one of them subsequently contradicting this (apparent
agreement). This too, however, is an extremely difficult point to
apprehend.
3) Investigating whether the advocate of a doctrine had access
to the text he purportedly violated through diffuse congruence
or consensus. For not everyone has access to information based
on diffuse congruence. Nor is he necessarily able to distinguish
those points on which there is consensus from those that are the
subject of disagreement. Rather, these things are acquired
gradually over time, by poring over the books that catalogue
consensus and disagreement among the Ancestors. Moreover,
such knowledge cannot be acquired by reading one or two of
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 119

these books. For one or two books are not enough to ground a
consensus in diffuse congruence. Indeed, Abi Bakr al-Farisi,:
may God have mercy on him, composed a book purportedly
cataloguing the issues concerning which there was consensus,
and he was severely criticized for many of the claims he made.
In fact, regarding some issues, he was even contradicted. Thus,
anyone who violates a consensus that has not yet reached him
must be deemed ignorant and or wrong, not guilty of denying
any truth. He certainly cannot be branded an Unbeliever. At any
rate, acquiring the ability to make such determinations is no
mean feat.
4) Investigating whether the proof relied upon as a basis for
abandoning the apparent meaning of a text qualifies as a logical
proof or not. To be sure, it would take several volumes to explain
what qualifies as a logical proof.. And what we mentioned in
al-Qistas al-mustagqim and Mihakk al-nazar are merely samples
in this regard. Meanwhile, (most of) the scholars of the age are
too dim to limit what they take to constitute logical proofs to
that which fully satisfies the requirements thereof. Yet, mastery
of this propadeutic is absolutely indispensable. For if a logical
proof is definitive, it can serve as a licence to engage in
figurative interpretation, even remote figurative interpretation.
If it is not definitive, it can only serve as a licence to engage in
obvious figurative interpretation whose relationship to the
apparent meaning of a text is immediately apparent.
5) Investigating whether or not public disclosure of a doctrine
constitutes a significant detriment to religion. Those doctrines
that do not constitute a significant detriment should be treated
leniently, even if they are substantively abominable and clearly
absurd, such as the Twelver Shi‘ite doctrine to the effect that
their Imam is hiding in a vault and is expected to emerge
(one day). This is a false, clearly absurd, and extremely
abominable doctrine. But it poses no threat to religion. In fact,
the only threat it poses is to the fool who believes in it. For he
leaves his home every day with the intention of meeting his
Imam until night falls and he returns frustrated and dejected.
This is just an example. The point here is that not everyone who
120 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

embraces senseless hallucinations must be branded an

Unbeliever, even if his doctrines are clearly absurd.
Now, if you understand that investigating suspected instances
of Unbelief is contingent upon all of the preceding
considerations, individual aspects of which even the most
accomplished scholars are known not to have fully mastered,
you will know that those who rush to condemn people who go
against the Ash‘arite school or any other school as Unbelievers
are reckless ignoramuses. For, how could the jurist, purely on
the basis of his mastery of Islamic law (figh), assume this
enormous task? In what branch of the law does he encounter the
(aforementioned) skills and sciences?**? So when you see the
jurist who knows nothing but law plunging into matters of
branding people Unbelievers or condemning them as misguided,
turn away from him and occupy neither your heart nor your
tongue with him. For, challenging others with one’s knowledge
is a deeply ingrained human instinct over which the ignorant
are able to exercise no control. And it is because of this that
disagreement has proliferated among the people. Indeed, had
those who do not know what they are doing been dismissed as
such, there would be appreciably less disagreement among the
people.

XII

Among those who are most extreme and excessive (in this
regard) is a party of speculative theologians (al-mutakallimin)
who brand common Muslims Unbelievers, and claim that
whoever does not know the science of speculative theology
(kalam) as they know it and does not know the sources of
religion (al-adilla al-shar‘iya) via the proofs they have
established is an Unbeliever (k@fir)! First of all, these people
have (unjustifiably) narrowed the scope of God’s all-
encompassing mercy for His servants, rendering Paradise the
exclusive preserve of a small band of speculative theologians.
Secondly, they have ignored aspects of the Sunna that have
been handed down through diffusely congruent channels. For, it
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 121

had to occur to them that there were groups of uncivilized Arabs

during the time of the Prophet* and the Companions, may God
be pleased with them, who were steeped in idol-worship and
who devoted no attention at all to systematic proofs (‘ilm
al-dalil)—and even if they had devoted attention to this they
would not have understood it—who in the end were adjudged
(by the Prophet and the Companions) to be Muslims. Indeed,
anyone who believes that the way to faith (imGn) is speculative
theology, abstract proofs, and systematic categorization is
himself guilty of unsanctioned innovation. For faith in God
comes rather of a light which God casts into the hearts of His
servants, as a gift and a gratuity from Him. Sometimes this
comes in the form of a proof that appears to one internally but
which one cannot explain to others; sometimes it comes through
visions in one’s sleep; sometimes it comes by witnessing the
ways of a religious man whose light is transferred to one upon
befriending and spending time with him; and sometimes it comes
by way of circumstantial considerations: a bedouin comes to the
Prophet* rejecting and condemning (his claim to prophethood),
but when his eyes fall upon his radiant appearance, may God
increase it in honour and nobility, and he sees the lights of
prophethood sparkling therefrom, he says, “By God, this is not
the face of a liar.” Then he asks the Prophet to introduce him to
Islam, at which time he becomes a Muslim.** Another man
comes to the Prophet* and says, ‘In God’s name I implore you,
did God send you as a prophet?’ The Prophet* responds, “Yes,
indeed; I swear by God that He sent me as a prophet.’ Convinced
by this statement backed by this oath, the man accepts these
words and becomes a Muslim.*°
Such incidents and their like are too many to enumerate. And
not one (of the protagonists in these reports) occupied himself
with speculative theology or instruction on logical proofs. On
the contrary, it was by way of the aforementioned accompani-
ments that the light of faith appeared like a white flash in their
hearts. Then it continued to increase in intensity as a result of
their witnessing memorable events, their reciting the Qur’an,
and their purifying their hearts.
122 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Would that I knew when it had been related on the authority

of the Prophet* or the Companions, may God be pleased with
them, that they brought forth a bedouin who accepted Islam
upon it being stated to him, ‘Proof that the world is temporal is
that it is not devoid of accidents, and anything that is not devoid
of temporal accidents is itself temporal,’ or, “God the Exalted
knows by way of knowledge (as a distinct entity) and is powerful
by a power that is additional to His essence, being neither Him
nor other than Him,’ and other such notions from the repertoire
of the speculative theologians.
Now, I am not saying that these arguments or other
expressions carrying the same meaning were never used. What
I am saying is that every campaign (of the Prophet) produced,
in addition to those uncivilized bedouin who embraced Islam
under the shadow of the sword, a group of prisoners of war who
individually embraced Islam, either after an extended period of
time or shortly after their capture. And whenever any of these
people uttered the Testimony of Faith (shahada), they were
taught the rules of ritual prayer (salah) and obligatory alms
(zakah) and promptly sent back to their livelihood in animal
husbandry or whatever.
It is true, and I will not deny it, that the proofs cited by the
speculative theologians may serve as a means to attaining faith
in the case of some people. But the means to attaining faith are
not limited to these. In fact, it is rare (that these proofs ever lead
to faith). Instead, the type of discourse used in religious homilies
(ma‘rad al-wa ‘z), like that appearing in the Qur’an, is far more
effective.
As for that discourse executed after the fashion of the
speculative theologians, it fills the souls of those who hear it
with the sense that it is grounded in dialectics designed to silence
the commoner, and this not because it is true in itself. In fact, it
may even be a cause for stubbornness to take root in the
commoner’s heart. And for this reason, you do not see the
sessions of disputation among the speculative theologians, nor
those of the jurists, produce any instances of persons abandoning
Mu‘tazilism or some other unsanctioned innovation in favour of
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 123

some other view. Nor do you see this result in anyone

abandoning the Shafi‘i school for the Hanafi school, or vice
versa. These kinds of changes in affiliation take place for other
reasons, including fighting with the sword.°* And for this reason,
it was not the habit of the Ancestors to proselytize through this
kind of argumentation. Rather, they had harsh words for those
who delved into speculative theology and busied themselves
with (idle) inquiry and questioning.
In fact, were we ourselves to put aside all pretensions of
deference and decorum, we would declare outright that delving
into speculative theology, due to its many liabilities, is
religiously forbidden (haram), except for two persons: 1) A
man whose heart develops doubts which neither simple religious
homilies nor prophetic reports will remove. An argument based
on speculative theology may serve to remove these doubts and
provide a cure for his sickness. Thus, such arguments may be
used to treat such a person. But care must be taken to ensure
that he is only exposed to those arguments that are sound and
do not carry the germ of the disease from which he suffers. For
this presents the danger of stirring up ambiguity in his soul and
arousing doubts which cause him sickness and disabuse him of
his deeply-held sound beliefs. 2) A person of superior
intelligence who is firmly grounded in religion and whose faith
is reinforced by the light of certainty who wants to acquire this
discipline in order to be able to treat those who fall sick with
doubts, and in order to silence those who are given to
unsanctioned innovation when they come upon the scene, and
to guard his belief against the attempts by those who are steeped
in unsanctioned innovation to seduce him. Learning this
(discipline) with this aim in mind is a communal religious
obligation (fard kifaya). And learning enough of it to be able to
dispose of doubt and overcome specious arguments on dubious
issues is a religious obligation upon each individual (fard ‘ayn),
assuming that there is no other way to restore one’s deeply-held
beliefs.
The plain truth is that everyone who firmly believes what the
Messenger* brought, including the contents of the Qur’an, is a
124 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Believer (mu’min), even if he does not know the proofs

(that would substantiate this belief). By contrast, the faith that
results from the proofs of speculative theology is extremely
weak, subject to collapsing upon encountering the simplest
sophism. Indeed, true faith (al-iman al-rasikh) is the faith of the
masses that develops in their hearts from childhood due to their
constant exposure (to religious material), or that accrues to them
after they have reached the age of majority as a result of
experiences that they cannot fully articulate. This faith is only
perfected through constancy in religious devotions ( ‘ibadat) and
remembrance of God (dhikr). Indeed, if a person is constant in
worship to the point that he attains true God-consciousness
(taqwa) and his soul is cleansed of the pollutants of this transient
life and he achieves unfailing consistency in the remembrance
of God, the light of gnosis (ma Tifa) will reveal itself to him
such that matters that had been blindly accepted on faith become
as if he sees and witnesses them (for himself). This is true
gnosis, which obtains only after the fetters of formalized doctrine
are undone and the bosom is expanded by the light of God the
Exalted. ‘And whomever God wants to guide He expands his
bosom to (accept) submission to Him’;*’ ‘...thus he is upon
light from his Lord’.** Thus, when the Prophet* was asked
about the meaning of ‘expanding the bosom’, he said: ‘A light
that God casts into the heart of the faithful.’ It was then asked,
‘And what is its sign?’ He responded, ‘Turning away from the
world of false delights and turning to the world of permanent
duration.’*? Thus we come to know that the speculative
theologian who devotes himself to worldly indulgences, sparing
nothing in the pursuit thereof, does not attain true gnosis. For
had he attained it, he would have turned away from the world of
false delights, absolutely.

XIll

Perhaps you will say: You have derived (your definition of)
Unbelief from the act of deeming anything in scripture to be a
lie. But it is not the speculative theologian but the Prophet
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 125

himself,* in his capacity as legislator, who narrowed the scope

of God’s mercy for His creation, when he said, ‘God says to
Adam* on the Day of Judgement, “O Adam, send forth from
your progeny the party of the Hellfire.” To this Adam replies,
“How many, my Lord?” God responds, “Nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every one thousand”.’® He* also said, ‘My
community will divide into seventy-odd sects, only one of which
will be saved.’®
I respond: The first hadith is sound (sahih), but the meaning
it imparts is not that they are Unbelievers who will abide forever
in the Hellfire. Rather, they will simply enter the Hellfire, be
exposed to it and left there for a period commensurate with the
magnitude of their sins. It is only one in a thousand, on the
other hand, who enjoys divine protection from committing sin
altogether. And it is in this vein that God the Exalted has said,
‘And every one of you will arrive there.’ Moreover, ‘party of
the Hellfire’ simply refers to those who deserve to be placed in
the Hellfire because of the sins they commit. It does not preclude
the possibility of their being diverted from the path to Hell by
an act of intercession, as has been mentioned in a number of
(prophetic) reports and to which many reports clearly testify,
such reports being indicative of the magnitude of God’s mercy.
These reports are too many to enumerate. Among them,
however, is a report narrated on the authority of ‘A’isha, may
God be pleased with her: ‘One night I noticed that the Prophet*
was missing. So I searched for him and found him in a vestibule,
praying. Upon his head I saw three lights. When he completed
his prayer he said, “Who’s there?” I replied, “A’isha,
O messenger of God.” “Did you see the three lights?” he asked.
“Yes, messenger of God.” Thereupon he said, “A visitor came
to me from my Lord bearing the good news that God will cause
seventy thousand people from my community to enter Paradise
with no account of their deeds being taken and no punishment
exacted from them. Then another visitor came in the second
light and informed me that for every one of this seventy thousand
God will cause seventy thousand from my community to enter
Paradise with no account of their deeds being taken and no
126 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

punishment exacted from them. Then another visitor from my

Lord came in the third light and informed me that for every one
of this seventy thousand God will cause another seventy
thousand from my community to enter Paradise with no account
of their deeds being taken and no punishment exacted from
them.” To this I replied, “O messenger of God, your community
will not reach this number.” To this he answered, “It will be
reached by including bedouin who neither fasted nor prayed.”’®
Similar reports indicating the magnitude of God the Exalted’s
mercy are numerous.
Now, these reports refer exclusively to the community of
Muhammad*. But I say in addition that God’s mercy will
encompass many bygone communities as well, even if most of
them may be briefly exposed to the Hellfire for a second or an
hour or some period of time, by virtue of which they earn the
title, ‘party of the Hellfire’. In fact, I would say that, God
willing, most of the Christians of Byzantium and the Turks of
this age will be covered by God’s mercy. I am referring here to
those who reside in the far regions of Byzantium and Anatolia
who have not come in contact with the message of Islam. These
people fall into three categories: 1) A party who never heard so
much as the name ‘Muhammad’*. These people are excused.
2) A party among those who lived in lands adjacent to the lands
of Islam and had contact, therefore, with Muslims, who knew
his name, his character, and the miracles he wrought. These are
the blasphemous Unbelievers. 3) A third party whose case falls
between these two poles. These people knew the name
‘Muhammad,’* but nothing of his character and attributes.
Instead, all they heard since childhood was that some arch-liar
carrying the name ‘Muhammad’ claimed to be a prophet, just as
our children heard that an arch-liar and deceiver called ‘al-
Mugaffa‘™ falsely claimed that God sent him (as a prophet) and
then challenged people to disprove his claim. This group, in my
opinion, is like the first group. Even though they heard his
name, they heard the opposite of what his true attributes were.
And this does not provide enough incentive to compel them to
investigate (his true status).'
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 127

As for the other hadith, i.e., the one containing his statement,
‘only one of them will be saved,’ it has been narrated in different
versions. One narration has ‘only one of them will perish,’
though the most popular version is the aforementioned one.
Now, the meaning of ‘saved’ here is that they will not be
exposed to the Hellfire and will have no need for intercession.
For, anyone who is seized by the Attendants (al-zabaniya)® to
be dragged to the Hellfire cannot be said to have been saved in
any absolute sense, even if he is subsequently released from
their grip through an act of intercession. Moreover, there is
another version of the hadith that reads: ‘all of them are in
Paradise except the Crypto-infidels (al-zanddiga/s. zindiq),’
these being a sect (within the Muslim community). And it is
possible that all of these narrations are sound, which would
mean that ‘those who perish (al-halika)’ refers to one group,
namely those who dwell in the Hellfire permanently, ‘one who
perishes’ referring to a person of whom there is no hope of
reforming. For no good can be expected of him after he perishes.
‘Those who are saved (al-najiya),’ meanwhile, would refer to
another group, namely those who enter Paradise with no account
of their deeds being taken and without (the need or benefit of
any act of) intercession. For anyone who is made to account for
his deeds has (in effect) been punished and thus cannot really
be said to have been ‘saved’.®© Likewise, anyone who is
subjected to having to rely on an act of intercession has been
subjected to a level of humiliation by virtue of which he too
cannot be said to have been ‘saved’ in any absolute sense.
These two destinies,” then, correspond to that of the best
and that of the worst of creation. All of the rest of the groups
fall somewhere between these two ends. Some of them will be
punished purely on the basis of their record. Others will be
brought to the brink of the Fire and then turned back through an
act of intercession. Still others will (actually) enter the Hellfire
and later exit therefrom at an interval commensurate with the
extent of the erroneousness of their beliefs and unsanctioned
innovations, as well as the plentitude or paucity of their sins. As
for that group that will dwell in the Hellfire forever, it is simply
128 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

one group, namely those who deem the Prophet* to be a liar

and affirm the ‘possibility that he may lie in pursuit of some
(putative) common good (maslaha).
As for the rest of humanity, whoever, through diffuse and
congruent reports, hears about the Prophet, his advent, his
character, his miracles that defied the laws of nature—such as
his splitting the moon, his causing pebbles to celebrate the
praises of God, the springing forth of water from his fingers,
and the inimitable Qur’an with which he challenged the masters
of eloquence, all of whom failed to match it—whoever hears all
of this and then turns away from it, ignores it, fails to investigate
it, refuses to ponder it, and takes no initiative to confirm it, such
a person is a cynical (self-) deceiver (kadhib). And he is also an
Unbeliever. Most of the Byzantines and Turks, however, whose
lands lie far beyond the lands of Islam, do not fall under this
description.®
In fact, I might restate the matter in the following terms:
Whoever hears all of this, if he is religious and not among those
who prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter, he will almost
certainly be motivated to investigate it in order to discern its
truth-content. If he is not motivated, this will only be due to his
attachment to this (fleeting) world and the lack of any (cosmic)
fear on his part, along with a failure to appreciate the gravity of
religion (din). This (lack of motivation) amounts in effect to an
act of Unbelief. Similarly, if he is motivated but remiss in
investigating the matter, this too amounts to an act of Unbelief.
On the other hand, those possessed of faith in God and the Last
Day, whatever religious community they might belong to, cannot
betray this motivation (to investigate the claims of and about
Muhammad) after coming into knowledge of these indications
that were effected through miraculous means that defied the
laws of nature. And should they, in all earnestness, take it upon
themselves to investigate (this matter) and seek (the truth
thereof) and then be overcome by death before being able to
confirm this, they too shall be forgiven, by virtue of His all-
encompassing mercy.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 129

Think, then, of God’s mercy as being as vast and as all-

encompassing as it actually is. And do not measure divine issues
with the adumbrative scales of formal reasoning. And know that
the Hereafter is ever so close to this world. ‘Both the creation
and the resurrection of all of you are as that of a single soul.’
Just as most people in the world enjoy health and material well-
being or live in enviable circumstances, inasmuch as, given the
choice, they would choose life over death and annihilation, and
just as it is rare for even a tormented person to wish for death,
so too will it be rare for one to dwell in the Hellfire forever,
compared to (the number of) those who will be saved outright
and those who will ultimately be taken out of the Hellfire. And
none of this, it should be noted, is a function of God’s attribute
of mercy having changed in any way due to changes in our
circumstances. It is simply the fact of our being in this world or
in the Hereafter that changes.”? Otherwise, there would be no
meaning to the statement of the Prophet*: ‘The first thing God
inscribed in the First Book was, “I am God. There is no god but
Me. My mercy outstrips my wrath. Thus, whoever says, ‘There
is no god but God and Muhammad is His servant and
Messenger,’ for him is Paradise.” ’’! Moreover, you should
know that the precedence and vastness of God’s mercy has
revealed itself to the people of spiritual insight through various
means and illuminations other than the reports and anecdotes
that have come into their possession. But citing all of this would
take up too much time.
So delight in the good news of God’s mercy and
unconditional salvation if you combine faith with good deeds,
and of unmitigated perdition if you are devoid of these. And if
you are possessed of certainty in the basic tenets of faith but of
errors in some of your figurative interpretations, or of doubt
regarding either of these, or you combine good deeds with evil
ones, then do not hope for unconditional salvation. But know
that you stand between being punished for a period and then
released, and being interceded for by the one in whose every
utterance you have believed with certainty,” or by someone
else. So exert your every effort; perhaps through His grace
130 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

God will relieve you of the need for any intercessor. For at that
stage the situation becomes grave indeed.

XIV

Some people think that one is adjudged an Unbeliever based on

reason, not revelation, and that anyone who is ignorant of God
is an Unbeliever, and that anyone who knows God is a Believer.
To these people we say: ‘Judging a person’s blood to be licit
and that they will dwell forever in the Hellfire is a legal ruling
(hukm shar ‘t) which has no meaning prior to the coming of
revelation.’ If, however, what they mean is that revelation is
itself understood to indicate that anyone who is ignorant of God
is an Unbeliever, then this inference of theirs should not be
limited to the subject of God. Rather, a person who is ignorant
of the Messenger or the Last Day should also be deemed an
Unbeliever. Now, were they to limit their charge (of Unbelief)
to cases of ignorance of God Himself, i.e., to a failure to
acknowledge His existence or His oneness, and not extend this
to His attributes, they might find support for such a position.
But if those who err in the matter of the divine attributes are
also considered ignorant (of God) or Unbelievers, this would
compel us to condemn as Unbelievers anyone who denies the
attributes of eternity and sempiternity (1.e., gua attributes), and
anyone who denies the attribute of speech as an entity above
and beyond the attribute of knowledge, and anyone who denies
the attributes of hearing and seeing as entities above and beyond
the attribute of knowledge, and anyone who denies the
possibility of the beatific vision, and anyone who affirms (that
God exists in) a particular direction, and anyone who affirms
the existence of a temporal will that subsists neither in His
essence nor in any other substrate, and anyone who holds the
opposite of this view. In short, one would have to condemn as
an Unbeliever anyone (who erred) on any question connected
with the attributes of God. And this is a judgement for which
there exists no evidence.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 131

On the other hand, were we to restrict this rule to some of the

divine attributes to the exclusion of others, we would find no
basis for such a distinction. In sum, there is no sound basis
upon which to proceed in such matters other than to take the act
of deeming (Prophetic) statements to be lies (takdhib) as the
master principle. This enables us to include (on the one hand)
those who deem the Prophet to be a liar or who deem the
resurrection to be a lie and to exclude (on the other hand) those
who engage in (legitimate) figurative interpretation.
To be sure, one will inevitably encounter dubious cases, such
as those involving persons who appear to deem (Prophetic)
statements to be lies or who adduce figurative interpretations
that are questionable, as, for example, in the case of remote
figurative interpretation. And in judging such cases one will
have to rely upon probability (zann) and scholarly discretion
(ijtihad). You already know, however, that these are matters
that are open to scholarly discretion.

XV

There are some who say, ‘I simply brand as Unbelievers those

groups who brand me an Unbeliever. Those who do not brand
me an Unbeliever, I do not brand them so.’ This position,
however, is unfounded.
For were someone to say, ‘Ali, may God be pleased with
him, is most qualified to be Imam, assuming that he was not an
Unbeliever,’ then wrongly hold the latter to be an Unbeliever,
though we hold to be an Unbeliever anyone who (on purely
ideological grounds) challenges ‘Ali’s status (as an upright
Companion), this person would not be so condemned, because
his position would simply constitute an error (in his factual
assessment) regarding a religiously relevant question. Similarly,
if the Hanbalite is not deemed an Unbeliever because he holds
God to be located in a specific direction, he cannot be branded
an Unbeliever because he thinks or mistakenly holds those who
deny God’s being located in a specific direction to be guilty of
132 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

deeming (the Prophet) to be a liar rather than being engaged in

(legitimate) figurative interpretation.
As for the statement of the Prophet,* ‘Whenever a Muslim
charges his fellow Muslim with Unbelief, this redounds upon
one of them,’” this refers to instances where he brands him an
Unbeliever with full knowledge of his true state. In other words,
if a person knows that another person believes that everything
the Prophet* brought is true and despite this he brands the latter
an Unbeliever, he becomes himself an Unbeliever. As for his
branding this person an Unbeliever because he sincerely thinks
that the latter holds the Prophet to be a liar, this is simply a
mistake on his part regarding this particular individual. For he
may think that this person is indeed an Unbeliever who holds
the Prophet to be a liar, while in fact this is not the case. This,
however, does not constitute an act of Unbelief.

38 8

Through these reiterations, then, we have drawn your attention

to the deepest depths of the Maxim (of refraining from
condemning the people of Islam) and to the Rule (governing
figurative interpretation) that you should follow. So content
yourself with this. Peace.

NOTES

1. A reference to Qur’anic depictions of the pre-Islamic Arabs’ derision of

the Prophet Muhammad. See, e.g., 15: 6, 37: 36, 44: 14, 68: 2, and
passim,
2. Part of several verses in the Qur‘an, e.g., 6: 25, 8: 31,16: 24, 27: 68,
and passim.
3. Al-Ghazali’s imagery here is inspired by the famous Verse of Light
from Qur’an 24: 35: ‘God is the light of the heavens and the earth. The
likeness of His light is as that of a niche within which rests a lamp. The
lamp is encased in glass. The glass (in its brilliance) is as a pearly star,
ignited by a blessed olive tree, neither eastern nor western, its oil
virtually glowing though fire touches it not. Light upon light; God
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 133

guides to His light whomsoever He pleases. And God strikes similitudes

to humanity, while God is knowledgeable of all things.’
. See, Ihya’, 1: 120: ‘By malakit I mean the invisible world that is
apprehended through the light of insight and the heart.’
. Abi Bakr b. ‘Ali b. al-Tayyib al-Baqillani (d. 403/1013), a Maliki jurist
and rationalist theologian, was a pupil of Abi al-‘Abbas b. Mujahid
al-Ta’i, who was himself a pupil of the founder of the Ash‘arite school,
Abi al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Ash‘ari. See, ElJ, 1: 603-4. Ibn Taymiya,
incidentally, is reported to have held al-Baqillani to have been ‘the best
of the Ash‘ari mutakallimin, unrivalled by any predecessor or
successor.’ See, EJ2, 1: 959.
. Abi al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Ash‘ari (260/873-4 — 324/935), a descendent of
the Companion Abi Misa al-Ash‘ari, and eponym of the Ash‘arite
school of theology. Born in Basra, he was a devoted student of the
Mu‘tazilite theologian al-Jubba’i, though he subsequently broke with
the latter, reportedly around 300/912-13, and turned against the
Mu‘tazilites. He is credited with having legitimized the methodology of
the Mu‘tazilites by turning it to the defence of what would come to be
established as orthodox views. See, Ell, 1: 480-1; EJ2, 1: 694-5.
. Abt ‘Ali al-Husayn b. ‘Ali b. Yazid al-Muhallabi al-Karabisi, a
traditionist, theologian, and faqih, originally a partisan of the ahi al-ra’y,
he later joined the circle of al-Shafi‘i (d.204/819) when the latter came
to Baghdad. He died in 245/859 or 248/862. See, El2, 4: 596.
. Abi ‘Abbas al-Qalanisi was apparently a Shafi‘i jurist and ‘Ash‘arite’
theologian, perhaps even a student of al-Ash‘ari. Al-Baghdadi cites him
profusely in Usil al-din and refers to him as ‘one of our scholars’.
Curiously, however, I have not been able to locate him in the
biographical sources. Nor is there an entry on him in the Encyclopaedia
of Islam.
. In other words, if he is to follow him in his doctrine, there is no need to
go beyond this to proofs, since the requirement to follow renders proof
superfluous. Furthermore, this ‘proof’ could not really be a proof if one
is obligated to follow it whether one is convinced of it or not. For more
on this point, see, Ihya’, 1: 94 (line 10-11).
10. Earlier, the Hanafi jurist al-Jassas (d. 370/980) had explained in his
treatment of the hadith, ‘I have been commanded to wage war on the
people until they say, “There is no god but God...,”’ that this applied
only to the pagan associationists (mushrikin), not to Jews and Christians.
For the latter already acknowledge, in principle at least, the truth of the
statement, ‘There is no god but God.’ What renders them Unbelievers
(kafirs) is their rejection of the prophethood of Muhammad. For this
reason, according to al-Jassas, Jews and Christians do not have to be
fought until they say that there is no god but God, and if a Jew or
Christian acknowledges the prophethood of Muhammad (with all that
134 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

this entails in terms of following the latter’s shari‘a) he or she becomes

thereby a Muslim. See, Abi Bakr Ahmad b. ‘Ali al-Razi al-Jassas,
Ahkam al-qur’an, 3 vols., ed. ‘Abd al-Salam Muhammad ‘Ali Shahin
(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiya, 1415/1994), 2: 310-11.
nie ‘Deists’ is my rendering of the Arabic al-Barahima. In the early
doxographical works, the Barahima are said to have believed in God,
and even in His oneness (tawhid), but to have rejected the idea that God
sends prophets. (See, e.g., al-Baghdadi, Usil al-din 26ff.) According to
al-Ghazali, ‘They said that no benefit derives from sending them (the
prophets), since reason dispenses with the need for them’. See, [hya’,
1:112. My use of the term ‘deism’ (from the Latin deus, a god, God) is
based on the meaning given it by the 16th-century Swiss theologian
P. Viret, who used it as a term of opprobrium against people who, ‘in
contrast to the atheists, believed in God but accepted nothing of Christ
and his teachings’. See, The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, ed.
E. Fahlbusch et al. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Press, 1999), p. 788.
Later, the term ‘deism’ came to represent a philosophical position,
according to which God was the Creator but did not intervene in nature
or history. The world, in other words, was likened to a clock: once put
into motion, it could run perfectly well without any need of its maker.
See, ibid.
IW. Cf. al-Igtisad, 120: ‘Atheists are more worthy than Deists of being
deemed Unbelievers, because in addition to deeming the prophets to be
liars they reject the One Who sends the prophets.’
13. This is a reference to the permissibility of declaring war (jihad), i.e., as
an act regulated by Islamic law, against such groups, not, pace Watt
(Muslim Intellectual, 115), to any right to shed their blood at will in
civil society. Muslim jurists agree unanimously that Jewish and Christian
citizens of a Muslim state are inviolable, as protected minorities
(ahl al-dhimma). And while all but the Hanafis hold a Muslim’s murder
of a Jew or Christian to be a civil offence for the which the victim’s
family can only demand blood money (as opposed to execution, as
would be the case were the victim a Muslim), if a Muslim targets a Jew
or Christian merely because s/he is a Jew or a Christian, as opposed,
say, to settling some personal dispute or carrying out some crime of
passion, most jurists, including the staunch Ibn Taymiya, held that such
a murder constituted a criminal offence for which the Muslim was to be
executed under the law of hiraba. For more on this point, see, my
‘Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition,’ The Muslim World,
vol. 91, no. 3-4 (Fall, 2001): 293-318. For the view of Ibn Taymiya in
particular, see, Majmi‘ fatawa, 28: 311.
14. Al-Ghazali’s use of mushrik (associationist) here appears to be
somewhat out of place. What he might have in mind is the idea that all
of these groups seek in some sense to extract service from nature via
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 135

supernatural, as opposed to scientific, means (e.g., by their various

rituals and acts of worship) on the basis of beliefs about the supernatural
which could only be authenticated by information brought by the
prophets from God. By rejecting the prophets, therefore, these groups
directly or indirectly attribute the capacity to identify supernatural ways
and means of extracting service from nature to an entity other than
God, whence their associationism.
15. 19:17. This is a reference to the angel Gabriel’s appearing to Mary, the
mother of Jesus.
16. Sahih al-Bukhari, 9: 653 (Kitab al-ta ‘bir). Abi Hurayra reports: I heard
the Prophet* say, ‘Whoever sees me in his sleep (manam) will see me
in a state of full wakefulness; for Satan cannot assume my image.’
7. Literally, ‘a spirit’ (rh) after the fashion of Aristotle, who explained
the growth of plants by what he termed the ‘vegetative soul,’ whose
functional nature it was to cause change in bodies. See, Hartshorne,
Insights, 41.
18. Sahih al-Bukhari, 6: 448-9 (Kitab al-tafsir): Abi Sa‘id al-Khudri
reports; “The Messenger of God* said, “Death will be brought forth in
the form of a black and white ram, and a crier will call out, ‘O people
of Paradise,’ at which time they will stand up on their toes to see (what
is going on). He will say, ‘Do you know who this is?’ They will say,
“Yes, this is death,’ all of them having seen it. Then the crier will call
out, ‘O people of Hell,’ at which time they will stand up on their toes to
see (what is going on). He will say, ‘Do you know who this is?’ They
will say, ‘Yes, this is death,’ all of them having seen it. Then it will be
slain, and it will be said, ‘O people of Paradise, eternal dwelling and no
death; and O people of Hell, eternal dwelling and no death.’” Then he
(the Prophet) recited the verse, “And warn them of the Day of Gathering,
when the affair will have been determined even as they were steeped in
heedlessness.” Those steeped in heedlessness are the worldly people
(ahl al-dunya) who did not have faith.’
19. Ibid., 9: 751 (Kitab al-i‘tisam), part of a lengthy hadith reported by
Anas b. Malik on the authority of the Prophet: ‘...by Him in whose
hands rests my soul, Paradise and Hell were presented to me inside this
wall while I was praying. And I have never seen the likes of the good
and the evil I saw this day.’
20. For a similar report, see, Sahih Muslim (Kitab al-iman), 1: 134, on the
authority of Ibn ‘Abbas: ‘...as if I were looking at Jonah, the son of
Matthew, upon him be peace, mounted on a ruddy, curly-haired
she-camel, wearing a long woollen outer garment, the halter of his she-
camel being made of date-palm hemp, he uttering all the while, “At
your command”.’
21. For a report imparting essentially the same meaning, see, Sahih
al-Bukhari, 9: 822 (Kitab al-tawhid): ‘Abd Allah reports that the
136 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

Prophet* said: “The last person to exit the Hellfire and enter Paradise is
a man who comes out crawling. His Lord says to him, ‘Enter Paradise,’
to which the man responds, ‘My Lord, Paradise is full.” This exchange
is repeated three times, the man insisting each time that Paradise is full.
At this point God says to him, ‘For you shall be the equivalent of this
world ten times over.” ’
D2 Al-Subki cites this as one of the hadiths for which he could find no
chain. See, ‘Tabagat’, 6: 374.
Py. Al-‘Iraqi notes that al-Tabarani and Abt Nu‘aym had related this hadith
through two weak chains. See, al-Asfar, 1: 83. Meanwhile, Ibn Taymiya
insisted that this hadith was fabricated, citing several hadith experts,
including al-Darimi (d. 280/893), Ibn Hibban (d. 354/965), al-‘Ugayli
(d. 322/933), and Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200), to back his claim. See, his
al-Radd ‘ala al-mantigiyin (Refutation of the Logicians), 2 vols., ed.
Muhammad ‘Abd al-Sattar Nassar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Azhar, n.d.), 1:
344-6. R. Frank identifies ‘intellect’ here with the Neoplatonic ‘Agent
Intellect’. See, Ghazali, 27.
24. Wensinck, Mu jam al-mufahras, 2: 81, reports that Abi Da’iid related
this hadith in the chapter, Kitab al-sunna.
a. Al-‘Iraqi (‘al-Asfar’, 1: 103) reports that al-Tirmidhi deemed this hadith
sound on the authority of Ibn ‘Umar.
26. Ibid. (1: 102) reports that Muslim related this on the authority of
Ibn ‘Umar.
aiff Al-Subki (Tabaq@t, 6: 291, 6: 346) cites this among those hadiths for
which he could find no chain. Al-‘Iragi, meanwhile, (op. cit. 1: 103)
reports that Ahmad had related it on the authority of Abi Hurayra
through reporters, all of whom were reliable. One wonders if al-Subki’s
well-known anti-Hanbalite biases did not get the better of him here.
28. At Ihya’, 1: 103, al-Ghazali states that the Ash‘arites limited the use of
figurative interpretation to reports about the divine attributes, accepting
reports about matters of the Afterlife according to their apparent
meaning. On this score, they were in agreement with the Hanbalites.
The Mu‘tazilites, meanwhile, went beyond the divine attributes and
figuratively interpreted a number of reports regarding the Afterlife,
e.g., the punishment in the grave, the Scale (mizan), and the Path (sirat),
thus parting with both the Hanbalites and the Ash‘arites. At the same
time, the Mu‘tazilites accepted other reports about the Afterlife as
constituting literal truth, e.g., bodily resurrection, sentient pleasures,
and punishments. It was here, according to al-Ghazali, that they parted
with the generality of the philosophers.
29: Confirmed at /hya,’ 1: 114 (line 7ff.).
30. Le., the example of Ibn Hanbal resorting to figurative interpretations
based on noetic and analogous levels of existence shows that he accepted
these two forms. Ash‘arites and Mu‘tazilites, meanwhile, clearly engage
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 137

in figurative interpretation based on conceptual and sensory existence.

All groups obviously subscribe to literal interpretation. Cf., however,
Ibn Taymiya, who would later insist that it was only the rationalists,
and particularly a party of Ash‘arites, following the demise of
Mu‘tazilism, who upheld the propriety of figurative interpretation
(ta’wil). See, e.g., my ‘Ibn Taymiya on Trial in Damascus,’ Journal of
Semitic Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 51-3 and passim.
31, I.e., up, down, front, back, left, and right.
32. For an edited version of this work, see, al-Ghazali, al-Qusur al-‘awaii,
ed. M.M. Abi al-‘Ala’ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Jundi, n.d.), 9-80.
83: Ed. R. al-‘Ajam (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1994).
34. 6:78.
35. Cf., however, Abi Muhammad ‘Ali b. Ahmad b. Sa‘id Ibn Hazm, Kitab
al-fisl fi al-milal wa al-ahwa’ wa al-nihal, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat
al-Salam al-‘Alamiya, n.d.), 4: 5, where the author, his literalist Zahirism
notwithstanding, condemns as an Unbeliever (k@fir) anyone who
interprets these verses literally and concludes that Abraham took the
sun, stars, and moon to be his god.
36. G75:
37; See, ¢.g., Qur’an, 93: 7, where the Prophet Muhammad is reminded,
“And did He not find you drifting in error and then guide you?’
38. 62°75:
39} 20712:
40. 20: 69.
41, This designation actually applied to several groups, including the
Khurramites, the Qarmatians, and the Isma‘ilis, the last two being the
most important. It did not denote any particular school or specific body
of doctrines so much as an orientation, namely, that which insisted on
there being a hidden meaning behind every apparent one, particularly in
the case of scripture, and the notion that the only reliable knowledge
was that imparted by an infallible teacher. Al-Ghazali wrote an entire
work against the Batinites entitled Fada’ih al-batiniya (Scandals of the
Batinites), at the behest of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mustazhiri, as an
apparent counter to the Fatimids and their Isma‘ili Caliph in Cairo. In
his ‘al-Qistas al-mustagim, meanwhile, he referred to them as ta ‘limiya,
or ahl al-ta‘lim, a designation, according to al-Shahrastani, by which
Batinite groups were referred to in Khurasan. See, EI/, 1: 679. See also,
al-Qistas, 9, where al-Ghazali says that he was prompted to write this
work by a question from one of ‘the people of infallible instruction’
(ahl al-ta‘lim).
42. See, Qur’an, 20: 85-7.
43. Mu‘tazilism being apparently the lowest level of acceptable theological
doctrine.
138 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

44. According to al-‘Ajlini, al-Sha‘rani related a similar hadith, the latter

part of which read, ‘all of them will be in Paradise except one’. He
notes that the ‘ulama’ had identified this ‘one’ as the zanadiqa. He goes
on, however, to indicate that he read on the margin of al-Sha‘rani’s
Mizan another version of the hadith, in the words quoted by al-Ghazali,
(i.e., all of them will enter Paradise except the Crypto-infidels) on the
authority of Anas b. Malik from the Prophet. He says that Ibn Hajar
related the hadith according to this wording in his Takhrij ahadith
musnad al-firdaws. See, Isma‘il b. Muhammad al-‘Ajlini, Kashf
al-khafa’ wa muzil al-ilbas ‘amma ishtahara min al-ahadith ‘ala alsinat
al-nas, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1351/1931),
1: 150.
45. Abii Bakr ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn Kaysan al-Asamm (d. 200-1/816-18),
a famous Mu‘tazilite theologian, exegete, and jurist. See, al-Murtada,
Tabagat al-mu‘tazila, 56-7. See also, al-Baghdadi, Usul al-din, 271,
where he confirms al-Asamm’s rejection of the obligation to establish a
Caliphate: ‘al-Asamm claimed that were the people to desist from
wronging each other, they would be freed of any need for a Caliph
(Imam).
46. See, Qur’an, 24: 11-20 esp. 24: 11.
47. Ibrahim b. Sayyar b. Hani’ b. Ishaq al-Nazzam (d. between 220 and
230/835-45), a famous Mu‘tazilite theologian, was raised in Basra but
spent the last part of his life in Baghdad, where he died. He studied in
the circle of the Mu‘tazilite Aba Hudhayl al-‘Allaf, but then broke
away to form an independent school. See, EJ/, 3: 892-3.
48. Ahmad Karamustafa treats what are apparently later manifestations of
this same trend. Of the Malamitiya Sufis, for example, he writes: ‘The
Malamiti’s main concern was to hide his inner state from others for fear
that an ostentatious display of piety would lead to overindulgence in
the self and ultimately to self-complacency, thus distancing the believer
from God. It was because of his painstaking endeavor to conceal the
true nature of his religiosity that he sought to incur public blame by
deliberately transgressing the limits of social and legal acceptability.’
See, A.T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the
Islamic Later Middle Period 1200-1500 (Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press, 1994), 36.
49. See above, note 13.
50. Al-Ghazali seems to be pointing to a basic difference between legal and
theological deliberations. In the former, one may be justified, if not
compelled in certain instances (in the interest of maintaining order and
quelling disputes over time-sensitive rights), to rely on weak,
multivalent, or even dubious sources. In theology, however, there is no
compelling interest that would justify or necessitate passing judgements
on people on the basis of weak or multivalent sources.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 139

S1, What al-Ghazali is referring to here is the fact that, in many if not most
instances, what is taken to be consensus merely amounts to an absence
of any knowledge of disagreement, which is significantly less reliable
and certainly not the same as all those concerned positively expressing
their agreement on a point. For more on this point, see, my State,
XXXili-Xxxiv.
a2! Ahmad b. al-Hasan b. Sahl Abi Bakr al-Farisi. A jurisconsult of the
Shafi‘i school, he is reported to have studied with the likes of al-Muzani
and Ibn Surayj. The book to which al-Ghazali is referring is most likely
his ‘Uyin al-masa’il’. There is some controversy over his death-date:
al-Subki reports that some held it to be 305/922; but he himself says
that it had to have been after 341/952, based on comments he read in a
manuscript of ‘Uyin al-masa’il’. See, Tabagat, 2: 184-6. See also,
however, al-Zirikli’, al-A ‘lam, 1: 114, who gives a death-date of
300/917.
53. Al-Ghazali is referring here to the type of training in logic and related
subjects that would enable one to construct the demonstrative tests to
the end of applying the criterion he has laid out, this type of training
typically falling outside the general curriculum of the madrasa system.
54. I have not been able to locate such a hadith with a bedouin protagonist.
However, Imam Ahmad relates the following on the authority of the
Jewish convert ‘Abd Allah b. Sallam: ‘When the Prophet* came to
Medina, the people withdrew in fear, and I was among those who
withdrew in fear. But when I was able to take a clear look at his face,
I said, “This is not the face of a liar”...” See, Musnad al-Imam Ahmad
b. Hanbal, 6 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami li al-Tiba‘a wa al-Nashr,
Dar Sadir li al-Tiba‘a wa al-Nashr, n.d.), 5: 451.
350 See, e.g., Sahih al-Bukhari, 1: 97 (Kitab al-‘ilm), for a much longer
hadith, including the gist of what al-Ghazali relates here.
56. Rather than promoting the view that violence can instil belief, al-Ghazali
seems to be referring here to the fact that changes of heart sometimes
result from a certain seriousness and humility that accompanies the act
of putting one’s life on the line.
57. 6: 125.
58. 39:22. Cf. Ihya,’ 1: 93, for a more detailed statement to this effect.
59: al-Asfar, 1: 76, reports that al-Tirmidhi and al-Bayhaqi report this on
the authority of Ibn Mas‘td.
60. Essentially the same meaning is reflected in a lengthy hadith in Sahih
al-Bukhari, 4: 595 (Kitab al-anbiya’); Abt Sa‘id al-Khudri reports on
the authority of the Prophet: ‘God the Exalted says to Adam, “O Adam,”
to which the latter responds, “Your wish and your command, and all
goodness is in Your Hands.” God then says, “Send forth the contingent
of Hell.” Adam responds, “And what is the contingent of Hell?”
(God says,) “From every thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine,” at
140 ON THE BOUNDARIES OF THEOLOGICAL TOLERANCE IN ISLAM

which point the hair of young persons turns grey and every pregnant
female miscatries her foetus and the people appear to be drunk but they
are not drunk; nay, the punishment of God is severe...’
61. Wensinck, Mu ‘jam al-mufahras, 5: 135-6, cites several such hadith.
62. LOS 71
63. At Jhya,’ 4:531, al-Ghazali cites a similar hadith on the authority of
‘Amr b. Hazm al-Ansari, the end of which reads, ‘O Lord, will my
community reach this number?’ to which God responds, ‘I will fill it by
drawing from the bedouin.’ Al-‘Iraqi says that al-Bayhaqi had related
such a hadith in his section on the Resurrection and Judgement. He also
notes that Ahmad and al-Tabarani relate it via weak chains. In Takhrij
ahadith ihya’ ‘ulim al-din (ed. Abt ‘Abd Allah b. Mahmid b.
Muhammad [Riyadh: Dar al-‘Asima li al-Nashr, 1408/1987], 6:
2810-13), several other comparable hadith are mentioned. None of them,
however, include the phrase, ‘bedouin who neither prayed nor fasted’.
Also, ‘seventy’ was used by the Arabs to connote an extremely large,
indeterminable number, tantamount in many ways to such English
colloquialisms as ‘zillion’.
64. A reference to ‘Abd Allah Ibn al-Mugaffa‘ (d. ca. 139/756), a Persian
convert to Islam who rose to the office of Secretary of State under the
Umayyads and was executed around the age of thirty-six (most likely
for political reasons) under the early ‘Abbasid governor of Basra, Sufyan
b. Mu‘awiya al-Muhallabi. An accomplished man of letters, Ibn
al-Mugaffa‘ was known for his translations into Arabic (most notably
Kalila wa dimna) and for his contributions to the development of Arabic
prose. He was also known for his attachment to Manichaean beliefs and
was suspected of zandaqa, a charge apparently confirmed — and this is
the point of al-Ghazali’s statement here—by his criticisms of the Qur’an
and the Prophet Muhammad which resulted in an attempt to produce a
rival ‘scripture’. See, EJ2, 3: 883-5. For a brief statement on his attempt
to rival the Qur’an, see, J. Van Ess, ‘Some Fragments of the Mu ‘aradat
al-Qur’an Attributed to Ibn al-Mugaffa‘,’ Studia Arabica et Islamica:
Festschrift for Ihsan Abbas on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. W. al-Qadi
(Beirut: American University in Beirut Press, 1981), 151-63.
65. A reference to the angels mentioned in Qur’an, 96: 18.
66. Perhaps a reference to a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari (Kitab
al-raqaq) 9: 493-4: ‘Whoever is made to account for his record of
deeds is (effectively) being punished...’
67. I.e., entering Paradise with no account being taken, on the one extreme,
and being cast into the Hellfire to dwell therein forever, on the other.
68. At the time of al-Ghazali’s writing, the Great Seljuqs were still
establishing themselves in Anatolia and the Ottomans had not yet come
on the scene.
69. 31:28.
 FAYSAL AL-TAFRIQA 141

70. In other words, it is through the same mercy by virtue of which most
people enjoy health and relative prosperity in this world that most
people, speaking again in relative terms, will enter Paradise in the
Hereafter.
T& Al-Burhan Furi reports that this hadith was related on the authority of
Ibn ‘Abbas. See, ‘Ala’ al-Din ‘Ali al-Muttaqi b. Husam al-Din al-Hindi
al-Burhan Furi, Kanz al-‘ummal fi sunan al-aqwal wa al-af‘al, 19 vols.
(Hyderabad: Jam‘iyat Da’irat al-Ma‘arif al-‘Uthmaniya, 1364/1945),
1: 44,
72. I.e., the Prophet.
73. I.e., such as an extremely pious and right-believing person (wali/
pl. awliya’).
74. Sahih Muslim, 1: 78-9 (Bab hal man gala li akhihi al-muslim ya kafir).
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 INDEX

A Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition,
20-21, 23-4, 28-9, 52-3, 75, 78
“Abd al-Jabbar, al-Qadi, 71, 76, 140, al-Asamm, Abt’ Bakr ‘Abd
143 al-Rahman b. Kaysan, 42, 138
Abraham (the prophet), 107-8 al-Ash‘ari, Abi al-Hasan ‘Ali b.
Abrahamov, Binyamin, 17-20, 27, 74, Isma‘il, 12, 18, 35, 44, 93, 133,
76, 78, 143 143
Abi Da’ud, Sulayman b. al-Ash‘ath, Ash‘arism, 39-40, 45
69 Ash‘arites, 41-3, 46, 49, 74, 79, 85,
accident, 22, 42, 49, 53, 75, 76, 97, 88, 90, 93, 102, 104, 120, 136
122 associationists, 46, 49, 133-4
Acton, H.B., 25 Atheists, 46, 92
Adam (the prophet), 99, 125, 139 Attendants, 127
Advice (al-Ghazali’s), 63, 66 attributes (divine), 3, 10, 11, 31, 46,
Afterlife, 102 49, 70, 89, 90, 93, 96, 99, 100,
Ahbash, xi, xii 105, 125-6, 130-31, 135
Ahl al-hall wa al-‘aqd, 118 Australia, 47
Ahi al-sunna wa al-jama‘a, 18 authority, 6, 13, 17, 18, 20, 25-6, 28,
‘A’ishah, bt. Abi Bakr al-Siddiq, 113, 30-31, 47-8, 66, 71, 78, 109, 113-
125 14, 122, 135-6, 141
al-Ajlini, Isma‘il b. Muhammad, 138, Azmeh, Aziz, 70, 76, 143
143
al-Albani, Nasir al-Din, 77, 143 B
Allison, C.F., 82, 143
alogism (al-Ghazali’s), 59, 62 Baghdad, 7, 35-7, 39, 41, 43, 80, 101
al-‘Amiri, Abi al-Hasan Muhammad al-Baghdadi, ‘Abd al-Qahir, 41, 43,
b. Yusuf, 59, 143 45-6, 133, 138
Anatolia, 126, 140 al-Baqillani, Abu Bakr ‘Ali b. Tayyib,
Ansar Allah Community, xi 43, 45, 89, 133, 143
anthropomorphism, 11, 20, 22, 24, Barahima (see, Deists)
71, 75-6 Batinites, 43, 47, 80, 109, 116
‘aqida, 3,9 beatific vision, 10, 104
‘aql, 13, 19, 21, 60, 82, 96 being (see, existence)
‘arad/pl. a ‘rad (see, accident) Bello, Isa, 79, 143
Aristotle, 21-3 bid ‘a (see, unsanctioned innovation)
152 INDEX

Black Religion (also African- diffuse congruence, 6, 39, 47-8, 67,

American Religion), xii, 9, 15, 72 71, 114, 118-20, 128
Black Stone, 52, 101-3 Dualists, 46, 92
Black Theology, xii, 72, 78, 144, 148 Dutton, Yasin, 75, 144
Bowersock, Glen Warren, 15
Brown, Peter, 15, 144, 147 E
Buchman, David, 82, 145
al-Bukhari, Abu Abd Allah Esack, Fareed, 71, 144
Muhammad b. Isma‘il, 69, 144 existence—ontological (dhati), 21-2,
Bulliet, Richard, 15 42, 50-51, 60, 89-90, 92, 94-5, 97,
burhan (see, logical proof) 101-2, 104, 109, 111-12, 116-18,
Byzantines, 128 130—sensory (hissi), 50-51, 94,
Byzantium, 65, 126 96-8, 100, 104—conceptual
(khayali), 50, 94, 96, 98, 100,
c 104—noetic (‘aqli), 50, 94, 101,
104—analogous (shabahi), 50, 94,
Caliphate, 35, 40, 113, 118, 138 101-2, 104
China, 47 experience, 10, 63-4, 66, 100
Chittick, William, 62 extremists, 6
Choksy, Jamsheed,, 56, 144
Christian Theology, vii, 21 F
Christianity, 29, 72-3
Christians, xii, 14, 15, 21, 40, 46, 65, faith, 4, 8-9, 14, 18, 31, 43, 46-7,
92712650138 53-5, 61, 71, 87-8, 91, 121-4,
common good, 57, 101, 128 128-9
communal obligation, 38, 123 falasifa, 7, 44, 57, 59
Companions, 17, 26, 74, 78, 85, 88, al-Farabi, 59
1050113) 1217-23013) fard ‘ayn (see, individual obligation)
Consensus, 6, 13, 17-18, 27, 32, 39, fard kifaya (see, communal obigation)
48-9, 67, 114, 117-19 al-Farisi, Abi Bakr, 48, 119, 139
Corporealists, 12 Farrakhan, Louis, xi, xii
createdness of Qur’an, 11 Fifth Religion (see Black Religion)
Crypto-infidels , 5, 7, 12, 43-4, 46, figurative interpretation, 39, 44, 50-
55-6, 67, 92, 101, 110-11, 127, 56, 72, 94, 96-8, 100-101, 103-4,
138 110-12, 114, 116, 119, 129, 131
figh, 71, 82, 100-101, 109, 120
D Fleischacker, Samuel, 25
Followers, 17, 91
Dahriyin (see, Atheists) Frank, Richard, 39, 62, 79, 81-2
al-Darimi, ‘Uthman b. Sa‘id, 12, 136, fundamental principles, 6, 40, 47,
144 109, 112, 114
Deists, 46, 92 fugaha’, 57-8, 81
 INDEX 153

G Ibn Hazm, Abii Muhammad ‘Ali b.

Ahmad, 48, 81, 137, 140, 146
Gabriel (the Angel), 135, 195 Ibn al-Jawzi, Abii al-Faraj ‘Abd al-
Gabrieli, F., 100 Rahman ‘Ali b. Muhammad, 146
al-Ghazali (bio), xiii, 35-6, 59, 63, Ibn al-Khattab, ‘Umar (the Caliph),
182 105, 118
gnosis, 40, 62-3, 82, 124 Ibn al-Mugaffa‘, ‘Abd Allah, 12
God’s mercy, 64-6, 85, 101, 106, 119, Ibn Qudama, Muwaffaq al-Din Abi
125, 126 Muhammad ‘Abd Allah b.
Goldziher, Ignaz, 8, 40, 71, 78 Ahmad, 56, 75-6, 81, 146, 148
Gospels, 90 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 57, 59
Grabar, Oleg, 15 Ibn Taymiya, Tagi al-Din Abi
Graham, William, 74, 145 al-‘Abbas Ahmad b. ‘Abd al-
Greeks, 3, 11, 14-16, 21, 70 Halim, 40, 54, 57, 137, 146
Gyekye, Kwame, 24-6, 145 Ibn ‘Ubayd, ‘Amr, 75
‘Thya’ ‘ulum al-din’, 36-7, 39, 46, 61,
H 69, 87, 133
ijma‘ (see, Consensus)
hadith, 14, 17, 19-20, 23, 27, 52, 65, ijtihad (see, scholarly discretion)
69,.-732°77; 99 9101-25 111.61:17, ‘ilm al-kalam (see, kalam)
125, 127, 139-41 ‘lm al-mukashafah (or higher
Hahn, Lewis Edwin, 76, 145 theology), 39, 40
Hanafis, 123 Ilyas (the prophet), 80-81
Hanbalis, 24, 27, 46, 49, 77, 93, Imamate, 47, 113
101-2, 104-5, 131 iman (see, faith)
Hand (divine attribute), 99, 100, 102 individual obligation, 122
Hartshorne, Charles, 21-4, 76, 135, intercession, 85, 125, 127
145 . . al-‘Iraqi, ‘Abd al-Rahim b. al-
Henderson, John B., 70, 145 Husayn, 69, 136, 146
heresy—formal—material, 3-5, 8, 29, Izutsu, T., 21, 76, 147
39, 41, 56, 70, 80-82
hila/p\. hiyal, 88 J
hiraba, 134
Hobbes, Thomas, 60 Jackson, Sherman A., 147
hukm shar%, 92, 115, 130 Jahmites, 12, 142
al-Jassas, Abu Bakr Ahmad b. ‘Ali,
I 133-4, 147
Jews, 46, 92, 133-4
e

Ibn Abi Talib, ‘Ali (the Caliph), 75, Jismiya (see, Corporealists)
118, 131 Jonah son of Matthew, 98, 135
Ibn al-Hanafiya, Muhammad, 35 al-Jubba’i, Abt: ‘Ali Muhammad b.
Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad (al-Imam), 12, ‘Abd ai-Wahhab, 42
27, 52-3, 56, 73, 139, 140
154 INDEX

al-Juwayni, Imam al-Haramayn Abi ma ‘rifa (see, gnosis)

al-Ma‘ali ‘Abd al-Malik b. ‘Abd Marmura, Michael, 81, 145
Allah, 29, 35, 79 Mary (mother of Jesus), 135
maslaha (see, common good)
K al-Maturidi, Abu al-Mansur
Muhammad b. Muhammad b.
Ka‘ba, 48, 113 Mahmid, 12, 35, 148
kafir, 7, 89, 120, 137 Maturidites, 74
kalam, critique of, 18, 28-30, 39-40, Maxim (al-Ghazali’s), 112, 116, 132
61-7290 McCarthy, Richard, xiii-xiv, 147
kamal, 23 McCloud, Aminah B., xiv-xv, 147
al-Karabisi, Abt ‘Ali al-Husayn b. Mecca, 36, 48, 80-81, 112-13
‘Ali b. Yazid, 89 Medina, 27, 30, 95
Karramites, 41 Mihna, 70-71
Kaufmann, Walter, 71, 147 monism, 70-71
Kennedy, Hugh, 15, 147 Muhammad, Elijah, xi
khabar ahadi, 114 Muhammad, ‘Isa (al-Sayyid ‘Isa
al-Khabir, 10 al-Hadi al-Mahdi), xi
Kharajites, 42 Muhammad, Warith Deen, xi-xii
knowledge (divine), 12, 14, 18, 36-7, mushrik (see, associationists)
45-7, 53, 57, 60, 66, 72, 88-90, Muslim, Abi al-Husayn, 69
96, 108, 110-11, 114, 116-18, 120, mutakallimin (also ahl al-kalam), 18,
128, 130, 132 29, 53, 57-8, 62-3, 65, 85, 99
Knysh, Alexander, xv, 75, 147 Mu‘tazilites, 18, 41-2, 45, 49, 57, 71,
kufr (see, Unbelief), 82, 147 73-4, 81, 89, 91, 93, 102-3,
kursi (see, ottoman), 14, 15, 28, 74-5 110-11, 114

L N

Landholt, H., 82, 147 nafs, 60, 82

Late Antiquity, 14, 15, 28, 74-5 naqs, 23
logical proof, 55, 57, 59, 97, 104, nazar, 19, 21, 52, 105
106-9, 111, 114, 119, 121 al-Nazzam, Ibrahim b. Sayyar b.
Long, Charles, xii Hani’ b. Ishaq, 48, 81, 114, 138
nifaq, 57
M Nishapur, 7, 35-6, 39, 43, 68
al-Nizamiya, 35
Makdisi, George, 37-8, 71, 76-9, 82, Nizam al-Mulk (the vizier), 35
147 Nyberg, H.S., 143
malakit, 87
Malik b. Anas (the Imam), 27, 105, O
135, 138
al-Ma’miin (the Caliph), 27, 78 . orthodoxy, 4, 5, 8, 16, 29, 30-32, 41,
Manichaeans, 14-16, 28,30, 56, 140 70
 INDEX 155

ottoman, 96, 104 revelation, 3-4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17-

19, 28, 42, 52-3, 58, 62, 64, 67,
P 74, 100, 130
Rightly Guided Caliphs, 27
Path, 88, 91, 125, 136 Roman Catholicism, 3
Pen, 70, 96, 99, 100 rith (see, spirit)
Plato, 22 Rule of Figurative Interpretation
power (divine), 9, 21, 29, 46, 90, 100 (see, Qanin al-Ta’wil)
Process Theology (also Process ru’yat Allah (see, beatific vision)
Theism), 9-11, 21, 23, 77
prophethood, 6, 8, 47, 49, 65, 63, 87, Ss
110-12, 121, 133
Psalms, 90 Sahaba (see, Companions)
public intellectual (al-Ghazali as), 37, Salaf, 20, 70
39 Salafism, 78
Salafiya, xi, xii
Q scholarly digression, 114, 131
scripture, 3, 12-13, 28-9, 52-3, 92,
qalam (see, Pen) 110-11, 116, 140
al-Qalanisi, Abi ‘Abbas, 89 shafa ‘a (see, intercession)
qalb, 60 al-Shafi‘i, Muhammad b. Idris
Qadiri Creed, 43, 70 (the Imam), 27, 35, 41, 43, 123
Qadarites, 42 al-Shahrastani, Abi al-Fath
Qanin al-Ta’wil, 50-51, 101 Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Karim, 59
Qur’an, 8, 11-14, 18-19, 27, 42, 47- Shaked, S., 56
O57, 145 9021055 140,590135117, Shiites (Twelver/Imami), 47, 117,
121-3, 128 © 119
Shils, Edward, 25
R Sikhism, 56
Sirat (see, Path)
Rafidites, 42 speculative presumptions, 107, 147
Rahman, Fazlur, 71, 148 spirit, 65, 96
Rationalism, xi, 8, 17-20, 24, 27-9, al-Subki, Taj al-Din Abt Nasr ‘Abd
52-3, 61, 67, 73-4, 102 al-Wahhab ‘Ali b. ‘Ali, 79, 148
al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din Muhammad b. Sufism—al-Ghazali and, 36
“Umar, 29 Sunna—vs. hadith, 12, 13, 18-19, 42,
realization, 60-63, 72 Si Ose 20
religion, 3, 7-10, 16-18, 40, 44, 60,
63, 68, 85, 109, 115, 119 T
resurrection, 41, 110-11, 129, 131,
136 ta‘assub, 117
revealed religion, 3, 58, 63 al-Tabari, Abt Ja‘far Muhammad
b. Jarir, 11-13, 27, 72-3
156 INDEX

Tabi ‘iin (see, Followers) Unbelief, 3, 5-6, 12, 39-41, 44, 46-
tafsir, 11-13, 72 * 52, 55-8, 68, 91-2, 104, 112-16,
tajsim, 20 120, 124, 128, 130, 132
takdhib, 50, 55, 58, 93, 101, 131 unsanctioned innovation, 3, 48, 54,
takyif, 76 104-6, 109, 113-14, 121, 123
tamthil, 76 usul (see, fundamental principles)
taglid, 9, 20, 88 usul al-din, 16, 133
tasdiq, 50, 55, 93 usil al-figh, 8, 16, 114
tashbih, 20
tawatur (see, diffuse congruence) Vv
tawhid, 49, 93
ta’wil (see, figurative interpretation) Verse of Light (Gyat al-nur), 132
theology, 3, 4, 8-11, 14, 16-17, 21-2, Von Grunebaum, Gustave, 149
27, 32, 36-7, 39-40, 44, 54, 67,
85, 120-22, 124 WwW
Throne (‘arsh), 11-12, 24, 49, 71, 75,
96, 100, 106 wahdat al-wujiid (see, monism)
Tillich, Paul, 64, 76, 149 Washington, Joseph R., Jr., 9
Torah, 90 Watt, W. Montgomery, 30, 39, 73
tradition, 14-20, 24-8, 39, 47, 53 Wensinck, A.J., 69-70
Traditionalism, xi, 8, 17, 19, 24, 27- Whitehead, Alfred North, 21
9, 52-3, 67, 74, 78 wujiid (see, existence)
transcendence—thetoric of—, 11, 14,
16, 29 Z
Turks, 65, 126, 128
Tis, 35 Zabaniya (see, Attendants)
zanadiqa/s. zindiq (see Crypto-
U infidels)
zann/pl. zuniin (see, speculative
‘ulama’, 39, 54, 138 presumptions)
Zoroastrians, 14-15, 28