| Articles
Iman, Kufr and Takfir Pt 3 Iman, Kufr and Takfir Pt 3
The Imputed Insult
To understand what was said, and what was meant, one has to look at the context, which was various Deobandi scholars’ rebuttals of Ahmad Reza Khan’s belief in the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) incomparably vast knowledge of the unseen. This seemed to the Deobandis to blur the distinction between Allah’s knowledge and human knowledge; or more specifically, between the knowledge of the absolute unseen and the relative unseen.
The absolute unseen (al-ghayb al-mutlaq) is that which no one knows but Allah, such as when the Final Hour will come, or the knowledge of every particular of being, unobscured by limitations of past or future, this world or the next, time or space, or the other cognitive categories that limit and structure human perception of reality.
The relative unseen (al-ghayb al-nisbi) is a fact of everyday life, and is merely that each individual knows things others are unaware of, hence “unseen” in relation to them.
Certain Deobandi ulema felt that Ahmad Reza Khan wanted to say that the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) went beyond the relative unseen, that the Prophet knew the particulars (juz’iyyat) of all being, as only Allah does. They regarded this as tantamount to associating others with Allah (shirk) and a grave innovation (bid‘a). Their response was strident and hyperbolic, comparing the knowledge of Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) to that of various lower creatures in a way that probably no Muslim had ever compared him before, and giving the offense whose kufr or iman we are discussing in this section.
Before presenting what they said in detail, let us cast a glance at Ahmad Reza Khan’s prophetology. What were their utterances an answer to? Did Ahmad Reza actually ascribe Allah’s knowledge to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), inaugurating a bid‘a that nothing but such retorts could extinguish?
Ahmad Reza and the Prophet’s Knowledge of the Unseen
There is no doubt that Allah vouchsafed His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) a great deal of knowledge of what was unseen in relation to the rest of mankind. We have mentioned the above hadith of Bukhari that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told the Companions everything of consequence that would happen until the end of time. Despite which, there are many Qur’anic verses that show that no one but Allah knows certain things, not even the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), such as:
“No one knows the hosts of your Lord but He” (Qur’an 74:31),
and
“No soul knows what it shall earn tomorrow, and no soul knows in what land it shall die” (Qur’an 31:34),
and
“They ask you about the Final Hour, when it shall take place. Say: Only my Lord has knowledge of it: no one shall reveal it in its time but He. It weighs heavily on the heavens and earth; it shall not come upon you, but of a sudden. They ask you as if you knew all about it. Say: Its knowledge is only with Allah, but most people know not. Say: I am not able to either benefit or harm myself, except as Allah wills. If I had had knowledge of the unseen, I would have had great good from it, and no harm touched me. I am naught but a warner and a bearer of good tidings to people who believe” (Qur’an 7:187–88).
There are many similar Qur’anic verses, all of which Ahmad Reza Khan interpreted as referring to the earlier life of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), before Allah bestowed on him greater knowledge, until, in the final years of his life, Allah disclosed to him everything that was and everything that will be until Judgement Day. By this interpretation Ahmad Reza was able to reach an accord between verses like those above, and the hadiths which mention the Prophet’s vast knowledge of the unseen (Allah bless him and give him peace). There is, for example, a rigorously authenticated hadith related by Tirmidhi that Mu‘adh ibn Jabal (Allah be well pleased with him) said:
One morning the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was kept back from us, and he delayed the dawn prayer until we could almost see the sun, when he came out in a hurry and commenced the prayer. The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) performed it quickly, and when he had closed with Salams, called out, “Stay as you are, in your rows.” He then turned to us and said, “I shall now tell you what kept me from you this morning. I rose last night, made ablution, prayed what had been destined for me to pray, but then became so drowsy in my prayer that lassitude overcame me. And lo, I was with my Lord, Blessed and Exalted, in a surpassingly beautiful form, and He said, ‘O Muhammad,’ and I said, ‘Ever at Your service.’ He said, ‘What are the Supreme Assembly [of archangels] debating about?’ and I said, ‘I do not know.’ He asked this thrice. Then I saw Him place His hand between my shoulders until I felt the coolness of His fingertips between my breasts, and lo, everything was revealed to me, and I knew. He said, ‘O Muhammad, what are the Supreme Assembly debating about?’ I said, ‘About expiations.’ He said, ‘What are they?’ and I said, ‘The walking of one’s feet to good deeds, sitting in mosques after prayers, and making a thorough ablution when most unpleasant.’ He said, ‘And then?’ I said, ‘Feeding others, speaking affably, and praying the night when people sleep.’ He said, ‘Ask, saying: O Allah, I ask You that I may do good works, shun bad, and love the unfortunate; I ask that You may forgive me and show me mercy. And when You try a people, take my soul unafflicted. I ask Your love, the love of whoever loves You, and the love of works that bring one closer to Your love.’”
The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said. “It was the truth. Study and learn it” (Tirmidhi (c00), 5.368–69: 3235).
The words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) at this tremendous event, “and lo, everything was revealed to me, and I knew,” were understood by Ahmad Reza Khan to mean just that: that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had been endowed with such vast knowledge of the unseen that he knew even what the Supreme Assembly of archangels were speaking about. This alone enabled him (Allah bless him and give him peace) to give the address, as we have previously related from Hudhayfa (Allah be well pleased with him), that was also described by ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (Allah be well pleased with him) in the words,
The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) stood before us and told us of [everything from] the very beginning of creation until the inhabitants of paradise have taken their places and the denizens of hell theirs—whoever memorized it memorized it; and whoever forgot it forgot it” (Bukhari (c00), 4.129: 3192).
The Deobandis’ impression however seems to be wrong that Ahmad Reza Khan wanted to go beyond this and say that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) knew the particulars (juz’iyyat) of all being, as Allah alone does. It is certainly not borne out by Reza’s major work on the question al-Dawla al-Makkiyya li al-madda al-ghaybiyya [The Meccan realm: on the matter of the unseen], in which he plainly says:
We do not hold that anyone can equal the knowledge of Allah Most High, or possess it independently, nor do we assert that Allah’s giving [of knowledge to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)] is anything but a part. But what a patent and tremendous difference between one part [the Prophet’s] and another [anyone else’s]: like the difference between the sky and the earth, or rather even greater and more immense (al-Dawla al-Makkiyya (c00), 291).
Despite such unambiguous words, certain Deobandi ulema made rebuttals of what they viewed as the grave innovation of confusing the extent of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) with Allah’s. In the heat of argument, some of them met what they deemed exaggerated statements about the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) with equally exaggerated statements about of his lack of knowledge; reaching a degree that, by any ordinary measure, can be only be described as far below the standards of normal Islamic scholarly discourse.
What Khalil Ahmad Said
Thus the Deobandi scholar Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri wrote in his al-Barahin al-qati‘a [The uncontestable proofs] that there is no clear, unequivocal text in the Qur’an to support the belief that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has vast knowledge, though there is such evidence in regard to Satan and the Angel of Death. The most salient points of his discussion are the following:
(1) That Ahmad Reza’s proof of the vastness of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) is based on a false analogy between the Prophet’s merit (fadl) and his knowledge; namely, that because the Prophet’s merit was greater than that of the Angel of Death or Iblis, both of whom have exceptionally vast knowledge according to the Qur’an itself, it follows a fortiori that the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) must be greater than theirs (al-Barahin (c00), 54–55).
(2) The invalidity of such an analogy is shown by the story of Khidr and Moses in the Qur’an (18:60–83), for even though Khidr had greater knowledge than Moses, Moses had far greater merit, and he was both a prophet (nabi) and a prophetic messenger (rasul), while Khidr was only a friend of Allah (wali) (al-Barahin (c00), 54). The analogy’s invalidity is also shown by three other matters that Khalil Ahmad mentions in the following quotation, whose paragraphs, though contiguous in the original, we have separated and numbered here to facilitate reference in our subsequent discussion:
(3) “First, tenets of faith [like this one] are not analogical (qiyasi), that they may be established by analogy. Rather, they are decisive (qat‘i), or established by decisive scriptural texts, to such an degree that even a single hadith (khabar wahid) is of no use as a proof in this context. In consequence, the affirmation [of the vastness of the Prophet’s knowledge of the unseen (Allah bless him and give him peace)] is only worthy of attention once the author establishes it through decisive proofs. If he contradicts the entire Muslim Umma [who presumably do not believe this] and seeks to establish people’s belief as being incorrect through an invalid analogy, how can this be worthy of attention?
(4) “Secondly, the Qur’an and hadith establish the contrary, so how can his disagreement be admissible? Rather, all [such] of the author’s statements are inadmissible. The Pride of the World (upon whom be peace) himself says, “By Allah, I do not know what will be done with me or with you”—the hadith. Sheikh ‘Abd al-Haqq relates [the hadith]: “I do not even know what is behind this wall.” The issue of the marriage session has also been written in al-Bahr al-ra’iq and other works.
(5) “Thirdly, if greater merit really entails this [greater knowledge], then all Muslims, even if corrupt, and the author himself, are better than Satan [who is a kafir], in view of which greater merit, the author, by his own premises, must affirm that all ordinary Muslims have an equal if not greater knowledge of the unseen than Satan. And if the author has, as he claims, a high level of perfection in faith, then being superior to Satan, he must definitely be more knowledgeable than Satan—Allah be our refuge [from affirming this]! I am shocked and grieved by this example of the author’s ignorance. How far such stupid words are from knowledge and intelligence.
(6) “The upshot is that we should carefully note that if, after seeing the state of Satan and the Angel of Death, we affirm that the Pride of the World (upon whom be blessings and peace) has all-encompassing vast knowledge of the earthly sphere, contravening without proof decisive scriptural texts and proceeding solely from false analogy, then if this is not outright shirk, how should it be a part of faith? Such vastness [of knowledge] is established for Satan and the Angel of Death through scriptural texts. Through what decisive scriptural text has the Pride of the World’s vastness of knowledge been established, that one should affirm an act of shirk by rejecting all scriptural texts?” (al-Barahin (c00), 55).
This final rhetorical question, denying any evidence of the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) vast knowledge after affirming it of the Devil and the Angel of Death, was what made Ahmad Reza Khan Barelwi say that Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri had thereby demeaned and insulted the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and left Islam.
A Discussion of Khalil Ahmad’s Evidence
Because takfir is divisive and dangerous, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the five points that led to Khalil Ahmad’s judgement (in (6) above) that believing the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) to encompass the terrestrial realm, and to be incomparably vaster than the Devil’s or the Angel of Death’s, constitutes “an act of shirk,” and “rejecting all the scriptural texts.”
First of all, Khalil Ahmad is correct in pointing out in (1), (2), and (5) above that there is no necessary analogy between the two individuals’ respective merit, meaning their closeness to Allah, and their respective knowledge. His comparison of Khidr with Moses, as well as the knowledge possessed by Satan and the Angel of Death, conclusively proves that there is no strict analogy between the two things.
To imply however that Ahmad Reza’s whole argument hinges on this erroneous analogy is attacking a straw man. Even if the analogy was adduced by Reza, his belief in the Prophet’s vast knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not depend on “proceeding solely from false analogy” from the Prophet’s merit (upon him be blessings and peace), but rather on the sahih hadiths of eyewitnesses who heard the Messenger of Allah relate such wonders as the events of the world from beginning to end. This was reported by Hudhayfa: “The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) addressed us in a speech that omitted nothing until the Final Hour except that he mentioned it” (Bukhari (c00), 8.154: 6604); by ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab: “[He] told us of [everything from] the very beginning of creation until the inhabitants of paradise have taken their places and the denizens of hell theirs” (Bukhari (c00), 4.129: 3192); by Abu Zayd ‘Amr ibn Akhtab: “He informed us of all that was and all that would be, the most knowledgeable of us being whoever remembered best” (Muslim (c00), 4.2217: 2892); and by Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri: “He stood up and spoke, leaving out nothing until the coming of the Final Hour save that he mentioned it” (Tirmidhi (c00), 4.483–84)—all of which are rigorously authenticated (sahih).
Apart from these hadiths, the previously related dream-vision of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in which Allah imparted to him all-encompassing knowledge has also been attested to by a number of his Companions. As noted above, Tirmidhi reports with a rigorously authenticated (sahih) chain of transmission from Mu‘adh ibn Jabal that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said of this experience, “And lo, everything was revealed to me, and I knew” (Tirmidhi (c00), 5.368–69: 3235); and said in a well-authenticated (hasan) version from Ibn ‘Abbas, “I knew everything between the East and West” (Tirmidhi (c00), 5.367–68: 3234).
Second, while Khalil Ahmad is correct in asserting in (3) above that analogy (qiyas) cannot establish a tenet of faith, his saying that all tenets of faith must be established by “decisive scriptural texts”—meaning those unequivocally evidentiary (qat‘i al-dalala) and incontrovertibly authentic (qat‘i al-wurud)—and that “even a single hadith (khabar wahid) is of no use as a proof in this context” is inadmissible and misleading. It is misleading because the hadiths about the Prophet’s vast knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) are not one but many, and rigorously authenticated. It is inadmissible because the rule he mentions pertains to fundamentals of faith (usul al-‘aqa’id), not its details (furu‘ al-‘aqa’id) such as issues of prophetology like this one, which are established by single hadiths, as Imam Ghazali notes:
Everything [of the religion] heard [from an authoritative prophetic text] is examined, and if rationally possible, is obligatory to believe: [being either] undeniably obligatory, if the evidence for it is incontestable in its text and transmission, and it can bear no other interpretation; or provisionally obligatory if its evidence is merely probabilistic. For the obligation to espouse belief in something with tongue and heart is a spiritual work like other works, and so too is established by evidence that is probabilistic (al-Iqtisad (c00), 132–33).
Thus the difference between a tenet of faith established by a single hadith and a tenet of faith established by a “decisive scriptural text” (an unequivocal Qur’anic verse or mutawatir hadith) is not that the former is not a tenet of faith—but merely that someone who denies it is a fasiq or “sinful Muslim” for not fulfilling the obligation of believing in it, while someone who denies a tenet of faith established by an undeniably decisive scriptural text that is impossible to misunderstand or be ignorant of is a kafir, for rejecting something necessarily known to be of the religion (Reliance of the Traveller (c00), 626–27).
Third, Khalil Ahmad’s claim that belief in the vastness of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) is baseless because “the Qur’an and hadith establish the contrary” is also incorrect. All of the texts Khalil Ahmad has cited about the limitariness of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) can be interpreted, as Ahmad Reza did, to refer to before Allah disclosed to him the vast knowledge that he affirmed of himself and patently demonstrated (blessings and peace be upon him) in the above sahih hadiths. Khalil Ahmad’s evidentiary texts are thus subject to the rule from the science of Islamic legal proof (‘ilm al-dalala) that “when a received evidence may bear two or more different interpretations, it cannot be used to prove just one of them,” since, in Imam Shafi‘i's words,
When the circumstances governing an evidence cannot be made certain of, they reduce it to a generalization requiring other details to be properly understood, rendering it unfit [alone by itself] to prove something in particular (al-Qawa‘id (c00), 193).
The texts from the Qur’an and hadith about the Prophet’s not knowing things (Allah bless him and give him peace) do indeed bear the possible interpretation that they refer to an earlier part of his life before Allah revealed to him the vast knowledge attested to by other rigorously authenticated texts, so they are invalid as evidence for the limitariness of the prophetic knowledge that Khalil Ahmad is trying to prove.
Finally, Khalil Ahmad’s conclusion that
if, after seeing the state of Satan and the Angel of Death, we affirm that the Pride of the World (upon whom be blessings and peace) has all-encompassing vast knowledge of the earthly sphere, contravening without proof decisive scriptural texts and proceeding solely from false analogy, then if this is not outright shirk, how should it be a part of faith? Such vastness [of knowledge] is established for Satan and the Angel of Death through scriptural texts. Through what decisive scriptural text has the Pride of the World’s vastness of knowledge been established, that one should affirm an act of shirk by rejecting all scriptural texts?” (al-Barahin (c00), 55).
As we have seen, Ahmad Reza’s position is neither “against decisive scriptural texts,” for such texts are not “decisive” but rather interpretable as being prior in time to others that abrogate them; nor “without proof,” since his position is borne out by numerous intersubstantiative rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadiths; nor “proceeding solely from false analogy,” for it rather proceeds from the Prophet’s very words (Allah bless him and give him peace) in these hadiths. Moreover, it is difficult to see how the attribute of knowledge that Khalil Ahmad ascribes to Satan and the Angel of Death should become “shirk” when affirmed of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace): either it is a divine attribute that is shirk to ascribe to any creature, or it is not.
But even if we overlook these mistaken innuendos, Khalil Ahmad’s point as a whole, denying that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had vast knowledge, after affirming it of the Devil and the Angel of Death, is erroneous, for at least three reasons.
First, the Qur’an in its entirety is “vast knowledge” which Allah taught the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), containing everything important for mankind to know in this life and the next, as well as things about the unseen world, past nations, and their prophets that no one but a prophet could possibly know. This is explicit in the Qur’an.
Second, many unequivocal verses command us to follow the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), which is equally vast, answering all questions about the ethical implications of every possible human action until the end of time.
Third, it is disingenuous for an Islamic scholar to mention the lack of explicit textual evidence in the Qur’an without mentioning that there is such evidence in hadith. The above-mentioned rigorously authenticated hadiths of Tirmidhi, Bukhari, and Muslim about the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) knowing everything from the beginning of creation to the end of time, to even the debates within the Supreme Assembly of the archangels, conclusively decide the question.
In sum, Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri’s disadvantageously comparing the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) to Satan’s, the vilest creature in existence—regardless of the point he was making—is something few Muslims can accept. Whether Khalil Ahmad regarded it as a feat of ingenuity to show that because the Prophet’s knowledge was less than the Devil’s, it was a fortiori less than Allah’s, or whatever his impulse may have been, he badly stumbled in this passage. In any previous Islamic community, whether in Hyderabad, Kabul, Baghdad, Cairo, Fez, or Damascus—in short, practically anywhere besides the British India of his day—Muslims would have found his words repugnant and unacceptable.
The Words of Ashraf Ali Thanwi
The same is true of the Deobandi teacher Ashraf Ali Thanwi, who in a written objection to Ahmad Reza Khan’s calling the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) “Knower of the Unseen” (‘Alim al-Ghayb), asked whether this “unseen” refers to merely some of the unseen or part of it:
If it refers to but some of the unseen, then how is the Revered One [the Prophet] (Allah bless him and give him peace) uniquely special, when such unseen knowledge is possessed by Zayd and ‘Amr [i.e. just anyone], indeed, by every child and madman, and even by all animals and beasts? For every individual knows something that is hidden from another individual, so everyone should be called “knower of the unseen.” . . . [And] if it refers to all of the unseen, such that not one instance of it remains unknown, then this is incorrect because of scriptural and rational proofs (Hifdh al-iman (c00), 15).
Thanwi apparently meant that the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) knowledge of the unseen was the same in kind as that any of the others mentioned, that is, the knowledge of the relative unseen, which, as explained above, merely means that each of Allah’s creatures knows something that is “unseen” to others, while Allah alone has absolute knowledge of all of the unseen.
Aside from Thanwi’s artless comparison of the highest of creation with the lowest, the very point of saying it in refutation of Reza is not plain, in view of the latter’s explicit acknowledgement that no one can equal Allah’s knowledge or possess it independently or be given anything but a part of it, even if, as Reza says, “what a patent and tremendous difference between one part [the Prophet’s] and another [anyone else’s]: like the difference between the sky and the earth, or rather even greater and more immense” (al-Dawla al-Makkiyya (c00), 291).
This “patent and tremendous difference” is clear, as we have seen, from the great knowledge of the unseen given to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in the hadiths of Bukhari, Muslim, and Tirmidhi, which, taken with the vastness of the revelation of the Qur’an and sunna as a whole, make it easy to see why Reza and others called him “Knower of the Unseen”—meaning in comparison to the rest of mankind, not to Allah—and that by any measure, he possessed knowledge plainly not of the same order as that possessed “by every child and madman, and even by all animals and beasts,” to use Thanwi’s phrase.
At the latter words, the fiery pen of Ahmad Reza Khan wrote his Husam al-Haramayn [Sword of the Meccan and Medinan Sanctuaries], in which he condemned Thanwi, Saharanpuri, and other Deobandis—without referring to the context of their remarks, or what they had been written in reply to—and said: “All these groups [i.e. they and their followers] are kafirs, apostates, and renegades from Islam, by unanimous consensus of all Muslims” (Husam al-Haramayn (c00), 31), and that “whoever has doubts about [such a person’s] unbelief, or his being [eternally] punished, has himself committed kufr” (ibid.). Now, the temperament of Ahmad Reza Khan, with his acknowledged brilliance, doubtless played a role in this judgement, as did his love of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), which entailed withering scorn of those who did not share his somewhat exotic prophetology, and finally outright anathema (takfir) of those who had emphasized the Prophet’s humanity (Allah bless him and give him peace) with what appeared to be at the expense of his dignity.
His fatwa of kufr against the Deobandis, however, was a mistake. It was not legally valid in the Hanafi school for the two reasons named by Imam Haskafi at the beginning of this essay, namely,
A fatwa may not be given of the unbelief of a Muslim whose words are interpretable as having a valid meaning, or about the unbelief of which there is a difference of scholarly opinion, even if weak (Radd al-muhtar, 3.289).
First, the Deobandis’ words are interpretable as “having a valid meaning,” for they can be construed as making a distinction, however crudely, between Allah’s knowledge of the “absolute unseen” and man’s knowledge of the “relative unseen.” Saharanpuri and Thanwi both later explicitly mentioned this in their defense of themselves and other Deobandi figures.
Secondly, there is a valid “difference of scholarly opinion” about the unbelief of such words, for “even if weak” in the above Hanafi text means, according to commentator Ibn ‘Abidin, “even if the difference of opinion is found only in another school (madhhab) of jurisprudence” (Radd al-muhtar, 3.289). As we have seen, a difference of opinion does exist in another school, namely the position of the Shafi‘i Imam Subki that one must give “due consideration to the intention behind that which gives offense” (al-Sayf al-maslul (c00), 135)—that is, even when offense has been given. In this instance, “due consideration” means that if it is possible that Deobandi scholars intended something besides insult to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)—for example, a heated rebuttal of supposed innovation (bid‘a)—this legally prevents the judgement of kufr against them.
The sahih hadiths we have cited above show how strong this position of Subki’s is, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was in one instance reproved by an upset wife with the words “I don’t see but that your Lord rushes to fulfill your own whims” (Bukhari, 6:147: 4788); in another, accused of favoritism by those who said, “May Allah forgive the Messenger of Allah: he gives to Quraysh and neglects us” (Bukhari, 4.114: 3147); and in another, actually seized and choked by a bedouin demanding charity (Bukhari, 4.115: 3149)—none of which did he consider a deliberate offense or kufr, because each was interpretable as an unintentional insult.
It is also noteworthy that in each of these instances, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) with instinctive compassion and wisdom gave due consideration to the emotional states that pushed people beyond the ordinary bounds of adab or manners with him. The vehemence of Deobandi writers “defending Islam against shirk,” however misplaced, plainly affected the way they spoke about the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace). The above hadiths suggest that due consideration should be given to the emotions aroused by the “fatwa wars” of their times, just as the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) gave consideration to people’s emotions.
This does not mean that the words chosen by these writers were acceptable, even if “retorting against bid‘a,” or “fighting shirk.” As we have seen, there was no shirk in the position of Ahmad Reza Khan, who held that the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) differed from Allah’s divine knowledge not only in its extent, as quoted above, but in its very nature, for he was careful to emphasize that, “Allah’s knowledge is intrinsic, creatures’ knowledge is given to them; Allah’s knowledge is a necessary attribute of His being, creatures’ knowledge is merely possible; Allah’s knowledge is beginningless, endless, eternal, and true, creature’s knowledge originates in time; . . . Allah’s knowledge is uncreate, creatures’ knowledge is created” (al-Dawla al-Makkiyya (c00), 277).
Looking back, one cannot help wondering why Khalil Ahmad’s and Ashraf ‘Ali Thanwi’s own students and teachers and friends did not ask them, before their opponents asked them: When did any Islamic scholar ever compare the knowledge of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) to the depraved, to the mad, or to animals—even to make a point? Few Muslims would suffer such a comparison to be made with their own father, let alone the Emissary of God (Allah bless him and give him peace). But while such words were indefensible breaches of proper respect, they were not kufr, because the intention behind them was not to insult the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), but to defend Islam from what the writers viewed as a serious threat.
Conclusions
Imputed intentionality is a fallacy because the rigorously authenticated proofs we have seen are too clear to misunderstand that sometimes offense may be given to Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) that was not originally intended as an offense—and is therefore without the legal consequences it would have had if it had been intentional. The fatwas of Ahmad Reza Barelwi about the Deobandis are mistaken because they ignore this crucial legal distinction. Khalil Ahmad’s and Ashraf ‘Ali Thanwi’s comparisons of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) were offensive in their wording, and certainly not of the “ordinary scholarly discourse” acceptable among Muslims. But because they were intended as scholarly discourse, to emphasize the human limitations of the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) which these men regarded as an important and insufficiently understood religious truth—not as an insult against the Prophet—their words did not entail the judgement of kufr that Ahmad Reza Khan issued against them.
The other ‘aqida-related issues outlined above upon which Qasim Nanotwi and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi differed with Ahmad Reza are things that Muslim theologians can disagree about and still remain Muslim. They are not fundamentals of Islam, but rather inferences drawn through ijtihad from Qur’anic verses and hadiths about issues that have been historically disagreed upon by scholars greater than these. To consider such details a basic criterion of kufr and iman is to commit “the fallacy of ijtihad as ‘aqida,” which we hope to discuss in a forthcoming treatment of the Wahhabi sect.
As for Ahmad Reza’s contention on the last page of Husam al-Haramayn that whoever does not declare the kufr of an unbeliever—here meaning the Deobandis—himself becomes an unbeliever, this is the Islamic legal ruling only in certain cases of uncontestably certain kufr, such as followers of other faiths, who explicitly deny the messengerhood of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), not in all cases. Imam Ghazali gives the details in his al-Iqtisad fi al-i‘tiqad, in a passage we shall translate in the future in an essay on “the fallacy that not declaring another’s unbelief is unbelief.”
To conclude, the Barelwi response to the Deobandis was probably far worse than the initial provocation, raising for the first time in Indian history the banner of takfir of one major group of Hanafi Muslims by another. The sad irony in this was that the greatest Wahhabi bid‘a of all, takfir of fellow Muslims, was unleashed in India by denunciations of “Wahhabism.” Ahmad Reza’s fatwas depicted his opponents as “Wahhabi sects,” which his latter-day followers came to declare all Deobandis to belong to through a sort of “guilt by association.” This is a separate fallacy, which we shall examine next.
The Fallacy of Takfir by Association
Unlike Christianity, in Islam no one else can atone for one, for the same reason that no one can sin for one; namely the divine decree
“No bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another” (Qur’an 6:164),
which is also why a Muslim’s membership in a particular group or sect is not legal evidence that he is a kafir even when the tenets of the group include ideas that are kufr. One enters one’s grave alone, and is only responsible for one’s own beliefs, not those of others, although one is obliged to inform them of the truth when they are wrong on a religious matter. Subki, the mujtahid Imam we have cited in the previous section, whose duties as the head of the Islamic judiciary (qadi al-qudah) in Damascus in his time included deciding cases of kufr, was asked about judging members of certain Islamic sects as unbelievers and he answered:
We consider it a very serious matter to declare someone [outwardly a Muslim] to be a kafir, because it requires two things seldom found:
[a] The first is determining exactly what he believes. This is difficult in respect to seeing what is in the heart, distinguishing it from what merely resembles it, and accurately reporting it. Indeed, it is almost difficult to assess one’s own convictions, let alone someone else’s.
[b] The second is judging that it is actually kufr, which is very difficult because of the difficulty of scholastic theology (‘ilm al-kalam) and the evidence it derives from, and discerning the correct in it from what is otherwise. This is only attainable by a man who combines in himself sound intellect, rigorous self-discipline, a balanced temperament, training in logical analysis, mastery of the religious sciences, and lack of prejudice or personal interest.
Only when both of these exist is it possible to decide whether kufr has been committed or not.
Moreover, such a judgement may either apply to a particular person—which requires further that he confess it (and how unlikely that is); for any other proof of it would be difficult to accept, since evaluating it would require the above-mentioned conditions, though if proof were given or a confession made, its legal consequences would be entailed—or such a judgement may apply to a sect. In the latter case, the judgement may only be given as a general statement [that the tenets of the sect constitute kufr]. As for giving such a judgement against particular individuals, this is not legally possible unless there is a confession or evidence [about the specific person].
It is insufficient to say, “This person belongs to that sect,” because in addition to the difficulty of the above, there is another consideration; namely, that most sects are composed of common people who know little about tenets of faith. They but love a particular group and consider themselves to belong to it, without comprehending what it really is. Were we to declare them unbelievers, it would cause tremendous and unjustifiable harm.
This is the proper response to Nawawi’s saying, “If the kind of kufr that takes one out of Islam were meant, such people [members of deviant sects] would be fought and killed,” the answer to which is that the latter has never been done because it was not obligatory [as it would have been if the kufr of a sect’s beliefs were legally sufficient to establish that all its individual members were kafirs], even though we do make the generalization that “whoever holds that belief is a kafir.” The point is to identify it—while declaring a particular individual a kafir is exceedingly difficult, even if undeniable when its [above-mentioned] conditions exist (al-Fatawa al-Halabiyya (c00), 524–25).
“Guilt by association” is a fallacy because, in Subki’s words, “it is insufficient to say, ‘This person belongs to that sect.’” While the fallacy of guilt by association is by no means rare in our times, one the most extreme examples is provided by the following fatwa, published in the contemporary monthly magazine Kanz al-Iman in Delhi, India, from a work by the Barelvi mufti Jalal al-Din Ahmad Amjadi:
(Question:) Zaid is a Sunni [Barelvi] of sound beliefs. He wants to marry the daughter of a Deobandi. The woman is willing to become a Sunni. Would such a marriage be allowed?
(Answer:) Mawlawis [Religious scholars] Ashraf Thanvi, Qasim Nanotvi, Rasheed Ahmad Gangohi, and Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri were declared to be apostate unbelievers (kafir murtadd), by numerous noble scholars and venerable muftis of venerable Mecca, Medina Munawwara, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Burma, because of their decisive statements of disbelief (kufriyyat qat‘iyya), as in Hifz al-Iman (p. 8), Tahzir al-Nas (p. 2, 14, 28), and Barahin Qat‘iyya (p. 15). The details regarding this may be found in [Ahmad Reza Khan Barelvi’s] Fatawa: Husam al-Haramayn and al-Sawarim al-Hindiyya.
All the Deobandis consider them their exemplars and [to be] Muslims, and defend them. As a result, they too take the ruling of being apostates. It is not valid for anyone to marry an apostate, as mentioned in Fatawa Alamgiriyya [al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya] from al-Khaniyya (1.282). It says:
“It is not permitted for apostates to marry other apostates, nor [to marry] a Muslim or originally believing woman. Likewise, it is not permitted for a female apostate to marry anyone, as mentioned in al-Mabsut.”
In the case being asked about, the marriage of Zaid, a man of sound Sunni beliefs, to the daughter of a Deobandi is absolutely impermissible (hargiz nahin ho sakta). If she wants to become a Sunni, then if she and her entire household do so and it is then seen in two or three years that they are firm on the way of Ahl al-Sunna, then it would be permitted for Zaid to marry her. Otherwise, it would not be permitted.
It is absolutely not possible to permit marriage based on the deceptive words of someone who is legally an apostate. Otherwise, their very faith may be lifted [taken away from them]. If they go ahead, this would not affect Islam and the Sunna in any way. Rather, the person would be ruining his own life, and becoming of the people of hell (jahannami ho jayen ge).
If in the above-mentioned case the marriage is going to take place, then no qadi can perform their marriage. After this, all Muslims would be obliged to sternly boycott them, for Allah Most High says,
“And if the Devil makes you forget, then do not sit after the remembrance with wrongdoing people” (Qur’an 6:68).
(Kanz al-Iman (c00), 00).
It suffices as to its worth to reflect that according to this, a Hanafi Muslim man may marry a Jewish or Christian woman, but not a Hanafi Muslim woman from a Deobandi family, even if she rejects the Deobandi positions upon which the Barelvi’s mistaken takfir of them is based. The woman is supposed to be ineligible for marriage because of her mere association with Deobandis, and moreover remains guilty until proven innocent. This is not a fatwa, but a social problem. Such sentiments should be politely but firmly rejected by anyone who believes in Islam and the Prophet of Islam (Allah bless him and give him peace), who said,
The disease of [previous] nations has crept up upon you: envy and hatred. Truly, hatred is a shaver: it shaves away not hair, but religion. By Him in whose hand is my soul, you shall not enter paradise until you believe. And you shall not believe until you love one another (Musnad al-Bazzar (c00), 6.192: 2232).
The above fatwa is but an example. Otherwise, it is all too common to hear, for instance, that “So-and-so is a kafir because he is a Wahhabi,” or “a Shiite,” or “a Deobandi, or “a Salafi,” or “a Sufi,” or something else. In all such cases, even when the speaker’s impression of a group is not mere prejudice or hearsay, it is legally invalid to judge particular individuals according to the tenets of the group or to the words or deeds of other members.
Because Allah has decreed that “no bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another” (Qur’an 6:164), no Salafi, for example, has to acquit himself of the massacres of Muslims historically committed by Wahhabis in the past; or any Shiite for the practices of other Shiites; or any Sufi for utterances of other Sufis; and so on. The individual Muslim is only answerable for what he personally believes and does.
Members of other faiths, it should be noted, do not come under this rule because their very religions deny the veracity of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), which, as we shall see from Imam Ghazali below, is the very essence of kufr, and so they are obligatory to consider unbelievers. Subki notes:
The criterion is that as long as someone acknowledges the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and inwardly submits to following him (ittiba‘), then that person’s doing otherwise (ibtida‘) is because of something he mistakenly considers as evidence. As for someone who wholly dismisses this noble Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), his kufrBack to Articles |
