Abul Hasan
02-06-2005, 09:07 PM
:salam:
Lately, the issue of Tafweed has been discussed here. To add more on how the little one's of this age have tried to diminish the status of Imam al-Nawawi and his commentary to Sahih Muslim as well as his views on the Sifat of Allah, please find enclosed an article from 2000 CE on a student of al-Albani's known as: Mashhur Hasan Salman, compiled by Dr GF Haddad.
Before i quote, let me mention here a classic quote from Imam Tajud-Din al-Subki (8th century AH) who mentiond in his Tabaqat al-Shafiyya al-Kubra how the innovators from the shameless anthropomorphists in his days had cut up the words of the great Ash'arite Shafi'i Imam: Abu Zakariyya al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH, rahimahullah), succinctly those passage connected to the Sifat of Allah:
وقد وصل حال بعض المجسمة فى زماننا إلى أن كتب شرح صحيح مسلم للشيخ محيى الدين النووى وحذف من كلام النووى ما تكلم به على أحاديث الصفات فإن النووى أشعرى العقيدة فلم تحمل قوى هذا الكاتب أن يكتب الكتاب على الوضع الذى صنفه مصنفه
وهذا عندى من كبائر الذنوب فإنه تحريف للشريعة وفتح باب لا يؤمن معه بكتب الناس وما فى أيديهم من المصنفات فقبح الله فاعله وأخزاه وقد كان فى غنية عن كتابة هذا الشرح وكان الشرح فى غنية عنه
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One of the most industrious of the list, Mashhur Hasan Salman authored a book against Imam al-Nanawi pompously titled, "The Refutations and Critiques of the Figurative Interpretations of the Divine Attributes Committed by Imam al-Nawawi in Sharh Sahih Muslim and Other Important Matters" (al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat `ala Ma Waqa`a li al-Imam al-Nawawi fi Sharh Sahih Muslim Min al-Ta'wil fi al-Sifat wa Ghayriha Min al-Masa'il al-Muhimmat) which he begins with the words:
"He [al-Nawawi] has committed [!] in his book certain lapses and a host of mistakes related to the Names and Attributes of Allah, among other important matters, which are overlooked by his commentators, not to mention his readers, without any reference back to the school of the pious Salaf in those all-encompassing matters, which ought to be made as clear as the sun..."1
Mashhur Salman then proceeds with three hundred pages in which he casts aspersions on Imam al-Nawawi's explanations of the hadiths of Sahih Muslim pertaining to the attributes as wrong, rejected, unsound, and deviant according to himself and to Muhammad Harras - in his commentary on Ibn Taymiyya's `Aqida Wasitiyya -, at the same time specifying that al-Nawawi's views are founded on al-Qadi `Iyad's previous commentary on Sahih Muslim, and that the "refutations and critiques" apply to `Iyad also, as well as Ibn Furak, al-Khattabi, Ibn Mahdi al-Tabari, al-Bayhaqi, al-Maziri, al-Qurtubi, and Ibn Hajar!2
One of the main reasons for Salman's attack against Imam al-Nawawi is in order to dispute the latter's Sunni definition of tafwîd. In many passages of Sharh Sahih Muslim, al-Nawawi defines tafwîd as "committal of the meaning" (tafwîd al-ma`nâ) by which, according to him, we speak of "the Hand of Allah" but we commit the meaning of this expression to Allah Most High. Mashhur Salman, copying Ibn Taymiyya, defines tafwîd as "committal of the modality" (tafwîd al-kayf) and not that of meaning, thus asserting that when we speak of "the Hand of Allah" we do understand its meaning but commit its modality to Allah Most High, and that to say that we commit its meaning "is the way of nullification of the Divine Attributes (ta`tîl)!"3 In other words, according to the "Salafis," (1) those who commit the meaning to Allah are like Mu`tazilis and Jahmis who deny the reality of the Attributes of Allah and (2) they - the "Salafis" *know the meaning of the Divine Attributes* but *do not know the "how" of this meaning*!
One can only surmise that the reason Mashhur Salman insists so much on such an aberration is because he is such an ardent lover of Ibn Taymiyya and yet another one of his bumbling literalist imitators. In his attempt to force a particular error of the latter through the wall of correct doctrine, namely his claim that "Malik did not say that the modality was inexistent but only that it was unknown,"4 Salman desperately tries to prove that committal must therefore consist only in the committal of modality (kayfiyya) and not that of meaning (ma`nâ).
But the premise itself of the argument is entirely based on an inauthentic version of Imam Malik's statement on istiwâ'! For the authentic narrations of Imam Malik's famous statement all have, "The modality is altogether inconceivable" (al-kayfu ghayru ma`qûl), *not* "unknown" as claimed by "Salafis."5 Therefore, as held by al-Nawawi in the Ash`ari School and by Imam al-Pazdawi in the Maturidi - as the latter explained in the passage on the mutashâbih of his monumental work on usûl - the meaning itself is the problem.6 Before Salman, Nu`man Effendi al-Alusi - the "Salafi" son of the famous commentator - took the side of Ibn Taymiyya in an epistle titled Jala' al-`Aynayn fi Muhakama al-Ahmadayn and was refuted by Qadi Yusuf al-Nabahani who pointed out in his Shawahid al-Haqq (p. 251) that "if the meaning of such verses were known it could not be other than in the sense in which the attributes of created entites are known, as in istiwâ' in the sense of sitting (al-julûs) which we know in relation to ourselves, and this applies to the rest of the ambiguous terms."
Mashhur Salman also defends Ibn Taymiyya against the charge of "brazen apostasy in the open daylight of the Muslim world" leveld against him by al-Kawthari for saying the following:
"You [Ash`aris] say that [Allah Most High] is neither a body, nor an atom (jawhar), nor spatially bounded (mutahayyiz), and that He has no direction, and that He cannot be pointed to as an object of sensory perception, and that nothing of Him can be considered distinct from Him. You have asserted this on the grounds that Allah is neither divisible nor made of parts and that He has neither limit (hadd) nor end (ghâya), with your view thereby to forbid one to say that He has any limit or measure (qadr), or that He even has a dimension that is unlimited. But how do you allow yourselves to do this without evidence from the Book and the Sunna?"7
Al-Kawthari commented the above lines with the words: "The reader's intelligence suffices to comment on these heretical statements. Can you imagine for an apostate to be more brazen than this, right in the midst of a Muslim society?"8
Mashhur Salman indirectly acknowledges the heresy of the Taymiyyan position by claiming that "he was merely paraphrasing the position of those who affirm the Attributes among the mutakallimîn"!9 And yet, as he undoubtedly knows, this particular argument of Ibn Taymiyya comes up too frequently and too favorably under his pen not to be unreservedly attributed to him.10
As mentioned before, Mashhur Salman is responsible for recirculating al-Qari's denounced book titled Mu`taqad al-Imam Abi Hanifa claiming that the parents of the Prophet - Allah bless and greet him - are in Hellfire. He is also responsible for reviving al-Bayhaqi's al-Khilafiyyat ("The Divergences" [between al-Shafi`i and Abu Hanifa]),11 essentially a refutation of the Hanafi school on fiqh divergences and a brilliant work but one which Ibn al-Subki said "is appreciated only by experts in both fiqh and hadith."
Undoubtedly, Mashhur Salman edited and printed such a book as part of the anti-Hanafi campaign being waged in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent and elsewhere and not because it is a classic of khilâf literature, as the man is neither a Hanafi nor a Shafi`i specialist.12
Salman published a work titled Kutubun Hadhdhara al-`Ulama'u Minha ("Books the Ulema Warned Against"), the "Salafi" equivalent of the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a guide listing books that the Roman Catholic Church forbade its members to read (except by special permission) because they were judged dangerous to faith or morals. A proof that this is in fact a guide to Sunni books deemed undesirable only by the supporters of innovation and misguidance is the fact that Salman includes in it Sulayman ibn `Abd al-Wahhab's (d. ~1210/1795) classic refutation of his younger brother Muhammad titled Fasl al-Khitab min Kitabillah wa Hadith al-Rasul - Allah bless and greet him - wa Kalam Uli al-Albab fi Madhhab Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab ("The Final Word from the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sayings of the Scholars Concerning the School of Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab"), also known as al-Sawa`iq al-Ilahiyya fi Madhhab al-Wahhabiyya ("The Divine Thunderbolts Concerning the Wahhabi School"). This valuable book is the first and earliest refutation of the Wahhabi sect in print, consisting in over forty-five concise chapters spanning 120 pages that show beyond doubt the fundamental divergence of the Wahhabi school, not only from the Consensus and usûl of Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama`a and the fiqh of the Hanbali madhhab, but also from their putative Imams, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim on most or all the issues reviewed. The Fasl/Sawa`iq received the following editions:
1st edition: Bombay: Matba`a Nukhbat al-Akhbar, 1306/1889.
2nd edition: Cairo.
3rd edition: Istanbul: Ishik reprints at Wakf Ihlas, 1399/1979.
4th edition: (Annotated) Damascus, 1420/1999.
Even in his own edition of Imam Abu Shama's al-Ba`ith `ala Inkar al-Bida` wal-Hawadith ("Assault on All Innovations"), Mashhur Salman explodes in a footnote of disapproval because, when it comes to Mawlid, Abu Shama instead of censoring it dares to say: "Truly it is a praiseworthy innovation and a blessed one"!
NOTES
1Mashhur Hasan Salman, al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat (Ryad: Dar al-Hijra, 1993) p. 8.
2Cf. section titled "Dwarves on the Shoulders of Giants" in Shaykh Hisham Kabbani's Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine (1:174-177) = Islamic Beliefs and Doctrine (p. 204-208).
3Salman, al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat (p. 67-84).
4Ibn Taymiyya, al-Iklil fi al-Mutashabih wa al-Ta'wil in his Majmu`at al-Rasa'il (13:309-310).
5The documentation of the sound narrations of Imam Malik's statement on istiwâ' was posted in full in his biographical notice at
http://www.deja.com/[ST_artlink=sunnah.org]/jump/http://sunnah.org/history/Scholars/Default.htm
6Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim (Turath ed. 3:19-20; 5:24-25; 6:36-37; 12:211-212; 16:166; 16:204; 17:3; 17:36; 17:129-132; 17:182-183); Pazdawi (d. 482), Usul al-Pazdawi and Kashf al-Asrar (1:55-60).
7Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ta'sis (1:101) = Bayan Talbis al-Jahmiyya (1:444).
8Al-Kawthari, Maqalat (p. 350-353).
9Salman, al-Rudud (p. 21-22).
10Cf. Ibn Taymiyya, Bayan Talbis (1:548, 1:600, 2:169); Sharh Hadith al-Nuzul (69-76); Majmu` al-Fatawa (3:306-310, 13:304-305); Minhaj (2:134-135, 192, 198-200, 527).
11Riyad: Dar al-Sami`i, 1994.
12Al-Bayhaqi's Khilafiyyat was counter-refuted by Imam `Ali ibn`Uthman ibn Ibrahim `Ala' al-Din al-Mardini - known as Ibn al-Turkumani - (d. 750) with his two-volume al-Jawhar al-Naqi fi al-Radd `ala al-Bayhaqi which exists in print (Hyderabad 1316/1898) and awaits reissue. On Ibn al-Turkumani see al-Fawa'id al-Bahiyya (p. 207) and al-Durar al-Kamina (3:156-157).
-------------------------------------------
Wassalam
Abul Hasan
Lately, the issue of Tafweed has been discussed here. To add more on how the little one's of this age have tried to diminish the status of Imam al-Nawawi and his commentary to Sahih Muslim as well as his views on the Sifat of Allah, please find enclosed an article from 2000 CE on a student of al-Albani's known as: Mashhur Hasan Salman, compiled by Dr GF Haddad.
Before i quote, let me mention here a classic quote from Imam Tajud-Din al-Subki (8th century AH) who mentiond in his Tabaqat al-Shafiyya al-Kubra how the innovators from the shameless anthropomorphists in his days had cut up the words of the great Ash'arite Shafi'i Imam: Abu Zakariyya al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH, rahimahullah), succinctly those passage connected to the Sifat of Allah:
وقد وصل حال بعض المجسمة فى زماننا إلى أن كتب شرح صحيح مسلم للشيخ محيى الدين النووى وحذف من كلام النووى ما تكلم به على أحاديث الصفات فإن النووى أشعرى العقيدة فلم تحمل قوى هذا الكاتب أن يكتب الكتاب على الوضع الذى صنفه مصنفه
وهذا عندى من كبائر الذنوب فإنه تحريف للشريعة وفتح باب لا يؤمن معه بكتب الناس وما فى أيديهم من المصنفات فقبح الله فاعله وأخزاه وقد كان فى غنية عن كتابة هذا الشرح وكان الشرح فى غنية عنه
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most industrious of the list, Mashhur Hasan Salman authored a book against Imam al-Nanawi pompously titled, "The Refutations and Critiques of the Figurative Interpretations of the Divine Attributes Committed by Imam al-Nawawi in Sharh Sahih Muslim and Other Important Matters" (al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat `ala Ma Waqa`a li al-Imam al-Nawawi fi Sharh Sahih Muslim Min al-Ta'wil fi al-Sifat wa Ghayriha Min al-Masa'il al-Muhimmat) which he begins with the words:
"He [al-Nawawi] has committed [!] in his book certain lapses and a host of mistakes related to the Names and Attributes of Allah, among other important matters, which are overlooked by his commentators, not to mention his readers, without any reference back to the school of the pious Salaf in those all-encompassing matters, which ought to be made as clear as the sun..."1
Mashhur Salman then proceeds with three hundred pages in which he casts aspersions on Imam al-Nawawi's explanations of the hadiths of Sahih Muslim pertaining to the attributes as wrong, rejected, unsound, and deviant according to himself and to Muhammad Harras - in his commentary on Ibn Taymiyya's `Aqida Wasitiyya -, at the same time specifying that al-Nawawi's views are founded on al-Qadi `Iyad's previous commentary on Sahih Muslim, and that the "refutations and critiques" apply to `Iyad also, as well as Ibn Furak, al-Khattabi, Ibn Mahdi al-Tabari, al-Bayhaqi, al-Maziri, al-Qurtubi, and Ibn Hajar!2
One of the main reasons for Salman's attack against Imam al-Nawawi is in order to dispute the latter's Sunni definition of tafwîd. In many passages of Sharh Sahih Muslim, al-Nawawi defines tafwîd as "committal of the meaning" (tafwîd al-ma`nâ) by which, according to him, we speak of "the Hand of Allah" but we commit the meaning of this expression to Allah Most High. Mashhur Salman, copying Ibn Taymiyya, defines tafwîd as "committal of the modality" (tafwîd al-kayf) and not that of meaning, thus asserting that when we speak of "the Hand of Allah" we do understand its meaning but commit its modality to Allah Most High, and that to say that we commit its meaning "is the way of nullification of the Divine Attributes (ta`tîl)!"3 In other words, according to the "Salafis," (1) those who commit the meaning to Allah are like Mu`tazilis and Jahmis who deny the reality of the Attributes of Allah and (2) they - the "Salafis" *know the meaning of the Divine Attributes* but *do not know the "how" of this meaning*!
One can only surmise that the reason Mashhur Salman insists so much on such an aberration is because he is such an ardent lover of Ibn Taymiyya and yet another one of his bumbling literalist imitators. In his attempt to force a particular error of the latter through the wall of correct doctrine, namely his claim that "Malik did not say that the modality was inexistent but only that it was unknown,"4 Salman desperately tries to prove that committal must therefore consist only in the committal of modality (kayfiyya) and not that of meaning (ma`nâ).
But the premise itself of the argument is entirely based on an inauthentic version of Imam Malik's statement on istiwâ'! For the authentic narrations of Imam Malik's famous statement all have, "The modality is altogether inconceivable" (al-kayfu ghayru ma`qûl), *not* "unknown" as claimed by "Salafis."5 Therefore, as held by al-Nawawi in the Ash`ari School and by Imam al-Pazdawi in the Maturidi - as the latter explained in the passage on the mutashâbih of his monumental work on usûl - the meaning itself is the problem.6 Before Salman, Nu`man Effendi al-Alusi - the "Salafi" son of the famous commentator - took the side of Ibn Taymiyya in an epistle titled Jala' al-`Aynayn fi Muhakama al-Ahmadayn and was refuted by Qadi Yusuf al-Nabahani who pointed out in his Shawahid al-Haqq (p. 251) that "if the meaning of such verses were known it could not be other than in the sense in which the attributes of created entites are known, as in istiwâ' in the sense of sitting (al-julûs) which we know in relation to ourselves, and this applies to the rest of the ambiguous terms."
Mashhur Salman also defends Ibn Taymiyya against the charge of "brazen apostasy in the open daylight of the Muslim world" leveld against him by al-Kawthari for saying the following:
"You [Ash`aris] say that [Allah Most High] is neither a body, nor an atom (jawhar), nor spatially bounded (mutahayyiz), and that He has no direction, and that He cannot be pointed to as an object of sensory perception, and that nothing of Him can be considered distinct from Him. You have asserted this on the grounds that Allah is neither divisible nor made of parts and that He has neither limit (hadd) nor end (ghâya), with your view thereby to forbid one to say that He has any limit or measure (qadr), or that He even has a dimension that is unlimited. But how do you allow yourselves to do this without evidence from the Book and the Sunna?"7
Al-Kawthari commented the above lines with the words: "The reader's intelligence suffices to comment on these heretical statements. Can you imagine for an apostate to be more brazen than this, right in the midst of a Muslim society?"8
Mashhur Salman indirectly acknowledges the heresy of the Taymiyyan position by claiming that "he was merely paraphrasing the position of those who affirm the Attributes among the mutakallimîn"!9 And yet, as he undoubtedly knows, this particular argument of Ibn Taymiyya comes up too frequently and too favorably under his pen not to be unreservedly attributed to him.10
As mentioned before, Mashhur Salman is responsible for recirculating al-Qari's denounced book titled Mu`taqad al-Imam Abi Hanifa claiming that the parents of the Prophet - Allah bless and greet him - are in Hellfire. He is also responsible for reviving al-Bayhaqi's al-Khilafiyyat ("The Divergences" [between al-Shafi`i and Abu Hanifa]),11 essentially a refutation of the Hanafi school on fiqh divergences and a brilliant work but one which Ibn al-Subki said "is appreciated only by experts in both fiqh and hadith."
Undoubtedly, Mashhur Salman edited and printed such a book as part of the anti-Hanafi campaign being waged in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent and elsewhere and not because it is a classic of khilâf literature, as the man is neither a Hanafi nor a Shafi`i specialist.12
Salman published a work titled Kutubun Hadhdhara al-`Ulama'u Minha ("Books the Ulema Warned Against"), the "Salafi" equivalent of the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a guide listing books that the Roman Catholic Church forbade its members to read (except by special permission) because they were judged dangerous to faith or morals. A proof that this is in fact a guide to Sunni books deemed undesirable only by the supporters of innovation and misguidance is the fact that Salman includes in it Sulayman ibn `Abd al-Wahhab's (d. ~1210/1795) classic refutation of his younger brother Muhammad titled Fasl al-Khitab min Kitabillah wa Hadith al-Rasul - Allah bless and greet him - wa Kalam Uli al-Albab fi Madhhab Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab ("The Final Word from the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sayings of the Scholars Concerning the School of Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab"), also known as al-Sawa`iq al-Ilahiyya fi Madhhab al-Wahhabiyya ("The Divine Thunderbolts Concerning the Wahhabi School"). This valuable book is the first and earliest refutation of the Wahhabi sect in print, consisting in over forty-five concise chapters spanning 120 pages that show beyond doubt the fundamental divergence of the Wahhabi school, not only from the Consensus and usûl of Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama`a and the fiqh of the Hanbali madhhab, but also from their putative Imams, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim on most or all the issues reviewed. The Fasl/Sawa`iq received the following editions:
1st edition: Bombay: Matba`a Nukhbat al-Akhbar, 1306/1889.
2nd edition: Cairo.
3rd edition: Istanbul: Ishik reprints at Wakf Ihlas, 1399/1979.
4th edition: (Annotated) Damascus, 1420/1999.
Even in his own edition of Imam Abu Shama's al-Ba`ith `ala Inkar al-Bida` wal-Hawadith ("Assault on All Innovations"), Mashhur Salman explodes in a footnote of disapproval because, when it comes to Mawlid, Abu Shama instead of censoring it dares to say: "Truly it is a praiseworthy innovation and a blessed one"!
NOTES
1Mashhur Hasan Salman, al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat (Ryad: Dar al-Hijra, 1993) p. 8.
2Cf. section titled "Dwarves on the Shoulders of Giants" in Shaykh Hisham Kabbani's Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine (1:174-177) = Islamic Beliefs and Doctrine (p. 204-208).
3Salman, al-Rudud wa al-Ta`aqqubat (p. 67-84).
4Ibn Taymiyya, al-Iklil fi al-Mutashabih wa al-Ta'wil in his Majmu`at al-Rasa'il (13:309-310).
5The documentation of the sound narrations of Imam Malik's statement on istiwâ' was posted in full in his biographical notice at
http://www.deja.com/[ST_artlink=sunnah.org]/jump/http://sunnah.org/history/Scholars/Default.htm
6Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim (Turath ed. 3:19-20; 5:24-25; 6:36-37; 12:211-212; 16:166; 16:204; 17:3; 17:36; 17:129-132; 17:182-183); Pazdawi (d. 482), Usul al-Pazdawi and Kashf al-Asrar (1:55-60).
7Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ta'sis (1:101) = Bayan Talbis al-Jahmiyya (1:444).
8Al-Kawthari, Maqalat (p. 350-353).
9Salman, al-Rudud (p. 21-22).
10Cf. Ibn Taymiyya, Bayan Talbis (1:548, 1:600, 2:169); Sharh Hadith al-Nuzul (69-76); Majmu` al-Fatawa (3:306-310, 13:304-305); Minhaj (2:134-135, 192, 198-200, 527).
11Riyad: Dar al-Sami`i, 1994.
12Al-Bayhaqi's Khilafiyyat was counter-refuted by Imam `Ali ibn`Uthman ibn Ibrahim `Ala' al-Din al-Mardini - known as Ibn al-Turkumani - (d. 750) with his two-volume al-Jawhar al-Naqi fi al-Radd `ala al-Bayhaqi which exists in print (Hyderabad 1316/1898) and awaits reissue. On Ibn al-Turkumani see al-Fawa'id al-Bahiyya (p. 207) and al-Durar al-Kamina (3:156-157).
-------------------------------------------
Wassalam
Abul Hasan