The Qadariyya, Mu‘tazila, and Shî‘a
by Dr. G. F. Haddad
These three groups are essentially one
and the same in several of their fundamental tenets of doctrine,
especially in their annullment of the reality of the Divine
Attributes apart from the Essence and their rejection of the
Divine foreordainment (al-qadar) of evil as well as good
on the rational grounds that “Allah cannot but will
good” – in effect setting up as many co-creators for
evil as there are rational beings.
The
Prophet (s) said: “Talk about foreordained destiny is for
the worst of my Community at the end of time.”[1]
Al-Suyuti succintly defined Qadari doctrine as “the
claim that evil is created by human beings.”[2]
Ibn Abi Ya‘la relates the following description of the Qadariyya:
“They are those who claim that they possess in full the
capacity to act (al-istitâ‘a), free will (al-mashî’a),
and effective power (al-qudra). They consider that they
hold in their grasp the ability to do good and evil, avoid harm
and obtain benefit, obey and disobey, and be guided or misguided.
They claim that human beings retain full initiative, without any
prior status within the will of Allah for their acts, nor even in
His knowledge of them. Their doctrine is similar to that of
Zoroastrians and Christians. It is the very root of heresy.”[3]
The Qadariyya or “Libertarians” are little
different from the rationalists known as the Mu‘tazila
or “Isolationists.” Both are traced back to the same
founders: ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd Abu ‘Uthman al-Basri (d.
~144) who left al-Hasan al-Basri’s teaching circle and
“isolated” himself, and Ma‘bad al-Juhani (d. 80)
“the first who spoke about qadar in al-Basra.[4]
Al-Dhahabi introduces the former as “the ascetic (al-zâhid),
the devout (al-‘âbid), the Qadari, the elder
of the Mu‘tazila and the first of them.”[5]
However, the name of Qadariyya highlights the doctrine
of qadar, while the name of Mu‘tazila refers
to the broader “Five Principles” – tawhîd,
‘adl, thawâb, îmân, and amr bi
al-ma‘rûf which al-Ash‘ari and al-Maturidi refuted
in whole and in detail in many of their books. Following is a
survey of these Five Principles integral to Mu‘tazili
doctrine:[6]
1. In the chapter
of tawhîd, the Mu‘tazila – and the
Shi‘a in their wake – held that Allah cannot be seen at
all, whether in the world or on the Day of Resurrection as that
would necessitate corporeality and direction for Him. In
contrast, Ahl al-Sunna held that Allah will most certainly
be seen by the believers on the Day of Resurrection without our
specifying how. Al-Ash‘ari authored several refutations of
the Mu‘tazili and Shi‘i view, and early Hanbalis
considered that the belief that Allah will not be seen on the Day
of Resurrection entails kufr.[7]
Furthermore, the Mu‘tazila – and the
Shi‘a in their wake – held that the Attributes are none
other than the Essence, otherwise, they claimed, there would be a
multiplicity of Pre-eternal Entities (qudamâ’);
therefore, to them, the Qur’an is created and both they and
the Shi‘is deny the reality and pre-existence of the
Attribute of Divine Speech. The vast majority of the early
Muslims including Ahl al-Bayt reject this fallacious
reasoning as summed up by Imam Malik: “The Qur’an is
the Speech of Allah, the Speech of Allah comes from Him, and
nothing created comes from Allah Most High.”[8]
Similarly al-Tahawi said of the Qur’an in his “Creed of
Abu Hanifa and his Companions” known as the ‘Aqida
Tahawiyya: “It is not created like the speech of
creatures.” This is the position of the totality of the Salaf
including the Four Imams and their immediate colleagues, in
addition to Sufyan al-Thawri, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak,
al-Awza‘i, Ja‘far ibn Muhammad , Abu Ja‘far
al-Tabari, Dawud ibn Khalaf, Zayd ibn ‘Ali and others of Ahl
al-Bayt, Ishaq ibn Rahuyah, al-Bukhari and his 1,000 shaykhs
by his own verbatim report in Khalq Af‘al al-‘Ibad,
and countless others of the pious Predecessors.[9] Dr.
Sa‘id al-Buti wrote:
The Mu‘tazila denied the
existence of the “Attributes of Meanings” (sifât
al-ma‘ânî),[10] asserting that Allah
is Knower without being characterized by any Attribute of
Knowledge (sifa al-‘ilm), and Powerful without
being characterized by any Attribute of Power (sifa al-qudra).
The only reason that made them adopt this position is their
notion that to attribute such an essential Attribute (sifa
dhâtiyya) to Allah I entailed assent to a
multiplicity of beginningless entities (ta‘addud
al-qudamâ’) to the number of these Attributes, which
assent constitutes disbelief by unanimous agreement. Therefore,
they said that His “being-knower” (‘âlimiyyatuhu)
and “being-powerful” (qâdiriyyatuhu) are
necessarily true of His essence and need not, in order to exist,
Knowledge and Power, contrary to the case for human beings. They
also said that Allah is perfect and complete in His essence, so
that, if we said that His “being-knower” is
established by means of the Attribute of knowledge, then His
essence would be lacking something since it needs, for its
completion, an external means – a position that is
unanimously null and void.
The above
are all specious claims to which the Mu‘tazili
perspective gave rise due to their burdening reason with more
than its capacity in these matters. This is their well-known
method. What is impossible in the multiplicity of beginningless
entities is that the beginningless essences be multiple
– not the Attributes of a single essence.[11]
Now, the “being-knower” of Allah is nothing more than
the ascription of the Attribute of knowledge itself to Allah I.
Nowhere in this is there anything “needing” nor
anything “needed.” This also tells you that the
ascription of the Attribute of knowledge to Him does not entail
His being completed by means of something other than Him.
There is
proof enough for us that Allah ascribed to Himself the Attribute
of Knowledge in the verse(they encompass nothing of His
knowledge save what He will) (2:255).[12] It is natural that
reason categorically assimilate His other Attributes with this
one, ascribing to Him, similarly, the Attributes of life,
power, hearing, sight, etc.
The
adduction of this verse as proof is well-established even if we
interpret the terms “knowledge” in it to mean “the
known” (al-ma‘lûm), although there is no
necessity for such interpretation. For if knowledge were not
firmly established for Allah I
He would not have attributed it to Himself nor signified the
object of the known by it. Thus the signifying of “the
known” by “knowledge” is still a branch of the
validity of the ascription of Knowledge to Allah Almighty.[13]
2. In the chapter
of the Divine Justice (al-‘adl), the Mu‘tazila
– and the Qadariyya, Shi‘a, and Christians
likewise – held that Allah cannot possibly create the evil
deeds of His servants, therefore they are in charge of their own
destinies and create the latter themselves through a power which
Allah deposited in them. This heresy is the core of Qadari
belief and was refuted by Imam al-Ash‘ari in his book Khalq
al-A‘mal, his student Ibn Khafif in his al-‘Aqida
al-Sahiha (§40: “Acts
belong to Allah, not to creatures, while earning – al-iktisâb
– belongs to creatures, but earning is created by Allah, not
by them”) and, before them, by al-Bukhari in his Khalq
Af‘al al-‘Ibad.
3. In the chapter
of Reward and Punishment, the Mu‘tazila held that
Allah, of necessity, rewards those who do good and punishes those
who do evil. This was refuted by Ibn Khafif who summed up the
Sunni position in his al-‘Aqida al-Sahiha (§32-34): “Allah is doer of what He
will: Injustice is not attributed to Him, And He rules over His
dominion as He will, without [anyone’s entitlement to]
objection whatsoever.” I.e. He rewards and punishes
without being obliged to do so by the actions of His servants and
He is free to place the disbeliever in Paradise and the believer
in Hellfire without any injustice on His part, since He owns all
sovereignty over the heavens and the earth, and no one received
any share of authority from Him to object to what He does. The
Mu‘tazila denied all this and further held that Allah does
not forgive grave sinners unless they repent before death, even
if they are Muslims. Al-Maturidi refuted this position in his
book Radd Wa‘id al-Fussaq (“The Refutation of
the [Doctrine of the] Eternal Damnation of Grave Sinners”).
The Mu‘tazila also denied the Prophet’s (s)
intercession, since he said: “My intercession is for the
grave sinners of My Community.”[14]
Al-Hakim stated, after narrating this hadith: “It contains a
rebuttal of the innovators who differentiated between
intercession for light and grave sinners.”[15] Ibn Hajar similarly adduced this hadith against
the Mu‘tazila by saying: “He did not restrict
his intercession to those who repented.”[16] Ibn
Abi ‘Asim even mentioned the apostasy of those who deny the
Prophet’s (s) intercession, as it is related through mass
transmission (tawâtur).[17]
4. In the chapter
of îmân the Mu‘tazila held that grave
sinners were considered neither believers nor disbelievers and
so construed for them a “half-way status” between the
two (al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn). They claimed that
grave sinners belonged eternally in the Fire – as
mentioned in the previous heading – but in a less harsh
situation than pure disbelievers.
5. Finally the Mu‘tazila
held, as do Ahl al-Sunna and the Shi‘a, that
commanding goodness and forbidding evil was obligatory upon the
believers. However, in deriving this and the previous four
headings, the Mu‘tazila and Shi‘a gave
precedence to reason and reason-based methods over the Sunna, the
Sunna-based principles of the Imams of the Salaf, and the
Consensus of the Companions and Salaf. They picked and
chose whatever verses and narrations suited their views and
rejected the rest either through manipulation of the meanings or
through flat denial of the authenticity of transmission, as did
the rest of the sects with limited or no knowledge of the Sunna
and its methodology.
The status of the Mu‘tazila, Qadaris, and Shi‘is
in the eyes of Ahl al-Sunna varied. The majority do not
consider them disbelievers, however, Ibn al-Subki spoke of
“a difference of opinion concerning the apostasy (takfîr)
of the Qadariyya.”[18] Ibn Abi Hatim in the
introduction to his al-Jarh wa al-Ta‘dil (1:373)
relates that Ibn al-Mubarak stopped narrating from ‘Amr ibn
‘Ubayd because “he used to propagate the doctrine of
absolute free will.” Al-Dhahabi refuses to call ‘Amr a
disbeliever,[19] although some
early sources such as Ibn Abi ‘Asim’s (d. 287) al-Sunna,
al-Ajurri’s (d. 360) al-Shari‘a and Ibn
Batta’s (d. 387) al-Ibana relate that the Qadariyya
were held so by Ibn ‘Abbas, Mujahid, ‘Umar ibn
‘Abd al-‘Aziz, Malik ibn Anas, Ibn al-Mubarak, Sufyan
al-Thawri, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal among others.
The fact is that Sufyan al-Thawri, Ibn al-Mubarak, and Ahmad all
narrated from Qadaris, such as Thawr ibn Yazid, Dawud
ibn al-Husayn, Zakariyya ibn Ishaq, Dawud al-Dastuwa’i and
others, all of which are also among al-Bukhari and Muslim’s
narrators as shown by al-Suyuti’s list of Qadaris in
the two books of Sahih in his Tadrib (1:389). These
narrators could never have been retained if the Imams had
considered them disbelievers. However, the verdict of apostasy
is true from Imam Malik who did not narrate from a single Qadari
in his Muwatta’. Malik held that they should be
killed unless they repented, and the narrations reporting his
position of takfîr of the Qadariyya are sound.[20]
As for the Shi‘is the vast majority of Ahl
al-Sunna do not consider them disbelievers although the
degree of their acceptance varies from the early forms
indistinguishable from Sunnism – such as preferring
‘Ali to ‘Uthman – to the more extreme,
apostatizing forms of Râfidi and Ghulât
Shi‘ism such as cursing Abu Bakr and ‘Umar and
rejecting their Imamate as invalid or fantasizing that the real
recipient of Prophethood was supposed to be ‘Ali –
Allah be well-pleased with all of them.
Blessings and peace of Allah on the
Prophet, his Family, and all his Companions.
:: Dr. Gabriel F. Haddad ::
Version Imprimable
