Ahl as Sunnah vs the "Salafi" Movement - How the Wahhabis Cast Aside Reason

Ahl as Sunnah vs the "Salafi" Movement - How the Wahhabis Cast Aside Reason

Radd al Salafiyya - Refutations

Written by Al-Shaykh Jamil Effendi al-Siqdi al-Zahawi

Page 8 of 22

5: How the Wahhabis Cast Aside Reason

Since clear reason and sound theory clash in every way with what the Wahhabis believe, they are forced to cast reason aside. Thus by their taking the text of Qur'an and Sunna only in their apparent meaning (zahir) absurdity results. Indeed, this is the well spring of their error and misguidance. For by attending only to the apparent meaning of the Qur'anic text, they believe that God being fixed on His throne and being high above his throne is literally true and that he literally has a face, two hands and that his coming down and his going up is a literal going down and coming up and that he may be pointed to in the sky with the fingers in a sensible manner and so forth. According to this interpretation, God is made into nothing less than a body. These very Wahhabis, who call visiting graves idol-worship, then, become themselves idol-worshippers by fashioning the object they worship into a body, like an animal who sits on its seat and literally comes down and goes up and literally has a hand and a foot and fingers. But the true object of worship, God the Exalted, transcends what they worship.

Still, if one refutes them by rational proofs and establishes that their beliefs contradict the nature of divinity by criteria recognized by reason, they answer that there is no arena for the humble human minds in matters like this whose level is beyond the level of mere reason. In this respect they are exactly like Christians in their claim about the trinity. For ask a Christian: "How is three one and one three?" they will answer: "Knowledge of the Trinity is above reason; it is impermissible to apply reasoning in this area."

There is no doubt that when reason and the transmitted text contradict each other, the transmitted text is interpreted by reason. For often it is impossible for a single judgment to affirm what each of them requires because of what is entailed by the simultaneous holding together of two contradictory propositions. Taking one side or the other, in other words, does not relieve the conflict. On the contrary, one must choose either priority of the transmitted text over reason or reason over the transmitted text. Now the first of these two alternatives has to be invalid simply because it represents the invalidation of the root by the branch.

Clearly, one can affirm the transmitted text only by virtue of reason. That is because affirmation of the Creator, knowledge of prophecy and the rest of the conditions of a transmitted text's soundness are only fulfilled by aid of reason. Thus reason is the principle behind the transmitted text on which its soundness depends. So, if the transmitted text is given precedence over reason and its legal implication established by itself aside from the exercise of reason, then the root would be invalidated by the branch. And from that the invalidation of the branch would follow as well. For the soundness of the transmitted text is derived from the judgment of reason whose corruption is made possible when reason is invalidated.

So reason is not cut off by the soundness of the transmitted text. Hence, it follows that declaring the transmitted text sound by making it prior to reason constitutes nothing less than the voiding of its soundness. But if making something sound accomplishes its corruption we face a contradiction: the transmitted text, then, is invalid. Therefore, if the priority of the transmitted text over reason does not exist on the basis of the preceding argument, then we have determined that reason has priority over the transmitted source. And that is what we set out to prove.

Once one realizes this, one also realizes without question the necessity of interpreting the Qur'anic verses where the apparent sense contradicts reason when the said verses are obscure and do not refer to things that are known with certainty (yaqinat). On the one hand, there is general interpretation where the detailed clarification is left to God (tafwid tafsilih). This is the school of the majority of the Pious Ancestors of our Faith (al-Salaf). On the other hand, we have interpretation which sets out the text's meaning in a more perspicuous fashion. The majority of later scholars (al-khalaf) follow the latter. In their view:

The term "to firmly establish" as in the verse of Qur'an: "The All-Merciful is firmly established on His throne" (20:18) means "He took possession of it" (istawla). This is supported by the words of the poet who said: "`Amr took possession (qad istawla) of Iraq without bloodshed or sword."

God's saying: "And your Lord comes with angels rank on rank" (89:22) means his power comes.^ft1

His saying: "Unto Him good words ascend" (35:10) means: good words please Him.^ft1 For the word is an accident for which, by itself, locomotion is impossible.

His saying: "Wait they for naught else than that Allah should come unto them in the shadows of the clouds with the angels?" (2:210) means that His punishment should come unto them.^ft1

His saying: "Then He drew near and came down until he was two bows' length or nearer" (53:8-9) means that the Prophet came near Him by virtue of his obedience. The length of two bow-lengths is a pictorial representation in sensible fashion of what the mind understands.

In the Prophet's saying in Bukhari and Muslim: "God comes down to the nearest heaven and says: who is repenting, I shall turn to him, and who seeks forgiveness, I shall forgive him" the coming down signifies God's mercy^ft1. He specifies night because it is the time of seclusion and various kinds of acts of humility and worship and so forth among verses of Qur'an and narrations of the Prophet.

<<> - Next >>