Al-Hāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghaniyy al-Maqdisī (d. 600H) (رحمه الله) said:[1]
Know may Allāh have mercy upon you that Islām and its people are attacked and destroyed by three groups:
01 A group who reject the ḥadīths pertaining to the Attributes of Allāh and who reject their narrators. They are more harmful to Islām and its adherents than the disbelievers
02 A group who speak with the authenticity of these ḥadīths and accept them, but they perform taʾwīl (figurative interpolation) of them. They are mightier in their harm than the first group
03 And the third group, those who avoid the above two sayings, and begin, as they claim, to purify Allāh from all imperfections [calling this tanzīh], but in fact they are liars, and this leads them to the very same above two sayings. So they are more harmful than the first two groups.
Comments:
01 The first group are the Jahmiyyah and Mu’tazilah who reject the ḥadīths of the attributes and consider them inauthentic. They revile the narrators of these ḥadīths.
01 The second group are those from Ahl al-Kalām such as the Ashʾarīs and Māturīdīs who make taʾwīl of the texts of the attributes, and this is one approach among them. They are more harmful than the first group because people are naturally averse to those who reject the ḥadīths and disparage the trustworthy narrators, yet they will trust those who appear to affirm the texts, not realising that they, being unable to deny their authenticity are using another method to invalidate what they comprise of the affirmation of attributes for Allāḥ.
01 As for the third group, they do not reject the ḥadīths outright, nor attempt to distort their meanings through allegories, but they claim to make tafwīḍ, which is to claim that the meanings of the texts are unknown and that knowledge thereof is consigned to Allāh. They claim this so as to allegedly purify Him from what does not befit him because they presume that the apparent meanings of these texts are tashbīh (anthropomorphism). They are more harmful than the previous group, because they do not play around with the text by distorting it and speculating as to its meaning, as this may raise suspicion. Rather, they make the claim to piety of purifying and sanctifying Allāh from shortcomings, they also ascribe this way to the Salaf, and this can deceive people who are unaware of the realities.
As for the reason why they destroy Islām and its people, then it is because they erode an erase īmān and its foundations from the hearts of the people through their negation of Allāh’s Names and Attributes which is done either in whole as is done by the Jahmiyyah or in part as is done by the rest.
Taking this rejection to its natural, logical conclusion leads to the non-existence of Allāh (عز وجل). Negation of some attributes necessitates, due to logical and rational necessities and the avoidance of contradiction, the negation of all attributes, and that which is not described by anything is nothing in reality.
Arabic Text:
Footnotes
1. ʿAqīdat al-Hāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghaniyy al-Maqdisī (Riyāḍ 1411H, p. 112).
Related articles
