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Topic: Refutation needed! Ash'aris and Ta'wil
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 ummmusa88
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Umm Musa bint Muhammad
(New York)
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Member
Posts: 260
Joined: Sep 2008
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asalamu alaykum,
some people have claimed this:
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The Salafees say that there is no room for interpretation or metaphorical understanding, thus they believe that Allaah is above the Throne, literally not figuratively. Yet, they contradict themselves by metaphorically interpreting other Attributes like Him being closer to us than our jugular veins - Here they say that it's by His Knowledge! The Ash'arees are better than them! At least they admit to their practice of metaphorical interpretations!...
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Allah ulMusta'an, can someone please post a refutation to this! barakAllahu feekum!
ام موسى سعدية
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| abu.iyaad
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Member
Posts: 182
Joined: Sep 2002
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Was salaamu alaykum.
Ahl al-Sunnah, followers of the Hadith and Athar do not reject ta'wil, rather where a sound, authentic evidence indicates that the literal is not what is meant, then such a ta'wil is correct and true, and this is actually nothing but "tafseer", so what we are doing is explaining the meaning as in "tafseer". This differs from the tahrif (distortion) of the Ash'aris and others who make ta'wil based upon what is unknown in the language and what is baatil and what they devise of their own conventions for the language which are not known in the language of the Qur'an or the language of the Arabs. With respect to the texts of the sifaat, then it is established from the salaf that they make a) ithbaat wujood (affirmation of the existence of the attributes) b) alaa dhawaahirihaa (upon their apparent meanings) c) negation of takyif d) negation of tashbih - and this is established by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, al-Khattabi, al-Sabuni and others and is the methodology of the entirety of the Salaf.
Some examples of what is dhaahir (plain, obvious, apparent) from the wording and of what is legitimate ta'wil (which is nothing but "tafsir"):
The one you cited from Surah Qaaf. Allah does not indwell in his creation and all of the verses that mention Allaah's closeness, nearness, and Allaah being "with" the believers and the likes, all of that means with His knowledge or his aid and support, and this is known because elsewhere in the Qur'an Allaah affirms He is above His creation and in all these such verses (that mention nearness, closeness) there is always mention of knowledge or hearing or seeing. Further, the explanation of this verse as being in "knowledge" is nothing but the dhahir (apparent, obvious) meaning that a person would think of upon reading it. No person of sound mind would ever understand from this verse that Allah indwells in His creation, just like a person does not understand the saying of the Messenger (alayhis salaam) that Hellfire is closer to a person than his shoelace, that Hellfire is five feet away from him. When you say to any Muslim, "Fear Allaah, Hellfire is closer to you than your shoelace", no person of sound mind will think Hellfire is right now in front him, five feet away from him. Rather, the Muslim will simply understand the plain, obvious, apparent (dhahir) meaning that comes to mind. And this is the same with this verse, Allaah is closer in His knowledge to all of mankind than they are to their own jugular veins. This is not ta'wil (i.e. the ta'wil of the Ash'arites, to take a word away from its obvious meaning to a less obvious, and obscure meaning), it is the dhahir meaning or it is simply tafsir - depending on the particular example we use.
However, often the Ash'arites deliberately impose a false meaning upon the verse to then justify what they wrongly consider as ta'wil (which is tahrif in reality), when in fact, the verse is very clear in the first place and does not carry any false meaning. An example here is the verses in which Allaah says "we shall forget them..." and so the Ash'arites claim that Allaah forgets if we leave this upon its apparent meaning, and the answer is that in Arabic, "nasiya" the verb means to forget, and also to deliberately abandon, and this is its apparent meaning. So the verse simply means "we shall abandon them...". Hence, the Ash'aris have a habit of imposing false meanings deliberately to deceive the onlookers thinking that unless we "distort" the verse, it will have a false meaning. Hence, when we say about this verse (50:16) that Allaah is closer to us than our jugular veins, in knowledge, we are making tafsir, since we are informing of the intent of the speaker, and this is without doubt the intent of the speaker (Allah) and we have sound evidence for this, that this is indeed what is intended.
Likewise, the first verse of Surah Nahl (16:1), where Allaah says in the past tense, that the command of Allah has arrived, but what is really meant is the command of Allaah that is yet to come. So here the verse is taken away from its literal meaning, and the evidence for this which allows us to do this is in the very same verse, since Allah said, "The command of Allaah has come (meaning yet to come), so do not seek to hasten it." So what permits us to make "ta'wil" here is the evidence in the very same verse, and this is nothing but tafsir of the Qur'an with the Qur'an.
Likewise the verse "When you have read the Qur'an (meaning when you are about to read the Qur'an), then seek refuge in Allaah..." (16:98), the literal meaning is seek refuge after you have read the Qur'an, but in the Sunnah we find the Prophet (alayhis salaam) sought refuge before reciting the Qur'an, thus we have an evidence from the Sharee'ah that allows us to depart from the literal reading of the verse, and again this is tafsir of the Qur'an with the Sunnah.
So Ahl al-Sunnah do not reject this ta'wil except that this is in reality tafsir (exegesis, explanation) of the actual intent of the speaker, and is not the innovated tahreef (distortion) which is claimed to be ta'wil. Ibn al-Qayyim has nicely explained all the false types of ta'wil in a brilliant chapter in his book al-Sawaa'iq. A translation of that can be found here:
http://www.asharis.com/creed/?fnbwl
A good read of that will expose the difference between the legitimate ta'wil (tafsir) known to Ahl al-Sunnah, the false baseless ta'wil (tahrif) of Ahl al-Bid'ah.
Examples of false ta'wil include distorting the saying of Allaah "biyadayya" (with my two hands) (38:75) to mean, qudrah, ni'mah. This is impossible in this verse, even if we accept that yad can come with the meaning of qudrah and ni'mah and other meanings in other places. So treating "two hands" here as "favour, power" is tahrif and is rejected.
Likewise "istawaa" (ascended) claiming it means "istawlaa" (conquered) is impossible because the evidence rejects it, because Allaah said He made istawaa after He created the heavens and earth as occurs in most of those verses mentioning istiwaa (see 7:54). The tahrif of the Jahmiyyah would mean Allaah conquered the throne after not having conquered it, and this is false and is a revilement upon Allaah's mulk and qudrah. So every ta'wil they bring is in fact tahrif (distortion), and it has nothing to do with the ta'wil of the Salaf which is actually tafsir - which means "to inform of the actual intent of the speaker in his words", so when the Salaf make tafsir, they do so on the basis of correct, sound evidences.
And an example of newly devised conventions which are unknown in the Qur'an and the language of the Arabs, is their claim that al-waahid and al-ahad to mean that which is indivisible and one part of which cannot be distinguished from another - which the Asha'rites use to deny Allaah's uluww, and the Philosophers and Mu'tazilah use to deny the attributes - and this is unheard of in the language of the Qur'an and the language of the Arabs.
So when the Ash'arites make their ta'wil (which is tahrif), they do not have sound evidences for it and are merely speculating, and making novel and creative uses of the language, and inventing new conventions for words from their ownselves and cannot say for sure that the new meaning they have claimed is indeed what Allaah or His Messenger intended, and this is why there is no sound consistent view amongst them (Ash'aris, Maturidis), they dispute amongst each other regarding whether ta'wil should be the approach of tafwid should be the approach, and they cannot lay down any sound principle through which they can explain to us which texts should be subject to ta'wil and which ones should not, and why. So they are not consistent, are confused and merely play around and fool with the texts. This is the clearest and plainest of evidences that they are upon baatil.
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.-=abu.iyaad=-.
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11-11-2010 @ 3:44 AM
11-11-2010 @ 5:08 PM