Creed of Imam al-Tahawi - Part 2

The Creed of Imam Al-Tahawi - Part 2

Shared Theological Understanding Across Traditions

Perspective of their tradition, whether they're Jewish, Christian or Muslim, they're going to have a lot of shared terms and similarities. And so he was able to see very clearly what the creed of Imam Tahawi was. It's a summation of Muslim belief in 130 statements.

And what he articulated was, is that Christians, it would be very useful for Christians to read this, because in a very short time, they can get a beautiful and concise summation of what Muslims believe exactly. And so I thought that was very useful, how he articulated that.

Christian Creeds as Historical Parallels

So, for instance, you have the Nicene Creed in Christianity, the Athanasian Creed. You have these different early creeds of the Christians, the Didache. And they articulated early Christian belief. There's a lot of debates in Christianity.

Early Islamic Theological Schools

And in the Islamic tradition, early on, you had quite a few splits. You had the Mu'tazilite, you had the Khawarij, you had the Mutakallimun, who were more dialecticians working in a Hellenistic tradition and using a lot of Hellenistic terms. And then you had people like Imam Tahawi that were really trying to articulate a creed that was rooted directly in the Qur'an, and when necessary, in the Sunnah.

The Methodology of Creedal Formulation

But because the Sunnah is divided into solitary transmissions, what are called Ahad Hadith, and then Mutawatir, which are multiply transmitted Hadith, the creed generally was taken only from Mutawatir, which are quite few, they're not that many. So, it was very important for them not to really distinguish what was essential and what was incidental. And that's what Imam Tahawi tries to do.

Focusing on Essential Beliefs

He really lays out what is essential. One of the major problems in Muslim discourse today is that Muslims get involved in a lot of these, what are called Furu'iyyat (الفروعيات), the branches, and they forget about the roots. And so they get caught up and they argue about these things that really they have no, there's no need to argue about them, because one, most of them are insoluble.

We just don't have answers for them. And that's why the best position is (الله أعلم - Allahu A'lam). But the essentials, the Muslim religion, it's an incredibly unified religion.

The Unity of Islamic Creed

I mean, it's one of the stunning aspects of our religion, if you really look at these early articulations, what you find is that they agreed on their religion to an extraordinary degree. And for that reason, Muslims were reasonably well united. I mean, one of the beauties of our tradition, if you go from Indonesia to Morocco, in the pre-modern classical formulations, what you're going to find is there were basically three creedal formulations that were being taught.

The Three Major Creedal Schools

The Maturidi, from Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, he's a 4th century, late 3rd, early 4th century scholar. Abu Hassan al-Ash'ari. And then you have what could be considered an Athari tradition. I mean, people today would probably call it a Salafi tradition. And these three, although they differed, I mean, they're actually very close. I mean, there are differences, but they're so close that those differences are rather negligible.

And for that reason, they tend to respect each other. I mean, you have periods where they locked horns, particularly with certain, amongst the Hanabilah, there were a certain group of Hanabilah that tended to lock horns with the Ash'aris. Baghdad tended to be the... In Baghdad, there were a lot of, yeah.

Historical Tensions Between Schools

And you find that amongst, in the early period. But you find that in Fiqh also. Imam Tabari was attacked by the Hanbalis. His house was literally seized and they threw rocks at him. You have those problems. And the Hanbalis tended to incline towards a very rigid doctrine in which they did not allow for any speculative discourse about God.

And they did that because they wanted to preserve something. They didn't want people to venture in to areas that were the unknown. But the other scholars felt, look, we're being confronted with materialists, with the Qadariyyah (القدرية) determinists, rationalists, all these different groups.

Responding to Intellectual Challenges

They're throwing this stuff at us. And if we don't respond, if we don't use our knowledge to respond to these obfuscations, (شبهات - shubuhat), these doubtful matters, then we're jeopardizing our faith. We're jeopardizing people's faith.

Now, one of the problems today, we have young Muslims that go to university. They study evolution. They study dialectical materialism. They study post-modernism. And then you have people say, it's a bid'ah to teach them, you know, aqidah or something like that. They're being confronted with really difficult concepts.

Contemporary Challenges to Faith

And then they've got teachers that are very clever. I mean, in Europe, you know, atheism is quite widespread.

There are a lot of people. You have people like Richard Dawkins, who write very sophisticated books. And they come with very strong arguments. And people read these and get confused.

Somebody came up to me last night. I gave a talk. And somebody came up to me last night. And she just said, you know, how do you logically prove the existence of God? Is it something you can prove?

The Qur'anic Perspective on God's Existence

Well, for Muslims, you know, the Qur'an says, (أَفِي اللَّهِ شَكٍّ - afillahi shakk). [Quran 14:10] Is there any doubt about God? I mean, that's a rhetorical question from God. Is there any doubt about God? The Qur'an begins (الم * ذَلِك الْكِتَابُ لَا رَيْبَ فِيهِ - Alif Lam Meem * dhalika al-kitabu la rayba fihi). [Quran 2:1-2]

This is the book. There's no doubt in it.

The Challenge of Circular Reasoning

Now, people can say, well, so you have a self-attesting book. You know, I believe in God. Why? Because the Qur'an says for me to believe in God. Well, how do you know the Qur'an is true? Because God says it's true. Well, how do you know? Where does he say that? In the Qur'an. So you get into this circular reasoning.

And people outside of the faith, they deem it ridiculous or absurd. Because of that, in the Islamic tradition, you had a natural theology develop. There was an attempt to root theology in something outside of Revelation so that people could have a firm grasp of belief in a way that was not self-attesting, that it didn't have, that the proof wasn't within the very thing that you were trying to prove.

Methods of Establishing Prophetic Truth

So that was one attempt. Another, there were two other very interesting attempts. One was to prove the miraculous nature of the Qur'an, which is called (إعجاز القرآن - i'jaz al-Qur'an).

And that was done in several ways. One of them was linguistic nature of the Qur'an. Al-Baqillani focused on that. Of late, you've had certain scientific aspects (الإعجاز العلمي - al-i'jaz al-'ilmi), (الإعجاز العددي - al-ijaz al-'adadi), the numerical miracles of the Qur'an.

The other was what was called (دلائل النبوة - dala'il al-nubuwwah). And that's what I find more interesting.

Prophetic Proofs and Predictions

(دلائل النبوة - Dala'il al-nubuwwah) is to prove the inerrant nature of the Prophet, that the Prophet himself came with certain proofs. Once you establish those proofs, to deny the Prophet was basically just kufr. It was a type of rejection of a truth that was so evident.

And some of those were done through his predictions. I mean, for instance, I was telling my brother the other day, there's a hadith that the end of time won't come until a man's shoe talks to him. Now, when I first read that

hadith, it just sounded so far-fetched to me.

It really sounded strange as a hadith. I mean, you know, I admit that. When I read it, I was thinking, why would anybody have a shoe that talked? Although, I mean, I'm living in an age of miracles and wonders. Interesting times. Yeah, no, it is. It's the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart, right? It's a very odd time.

Modern Fulfillment of Ancient Prophecies

So you have, if you look at this hadith about the talking shoe. So, you know, I read that years ago. Well, lo and behold, a couple months ago, I'm reading the New York Times, and there's an article, these shoes are made for talking.

And the article was about, a Nike produced a shoe now that tells you in a digital voice, you can ask it, how far have you walked? And it'll tell you in a digital voice, you have walked 2.5 miles. So, when I told my brother that, he said, that's prophecy. He's a lawyer. I mean, lawyers, they deal in evidence. He just said to me, that's prophecy, to see that.

The Prophecy of the Great Fire Near Medina

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) predicted a fire near Medina that he said would be so great that it would illumine the necks of camels in Busra, which is on the border of Syria and Saudi Arabia today.

Now, that sounded crazy at the time for somebody to think of that, the Arabs, to think of a fire so great that light, it would illumine a place in Syria. Well, lo and behold, 1258, there was a six major volcanic eruptions just outside of Medina. A fire extended 200 kilometers. I've seen it. I've been there. And 70 kilometers wide.

Scientific Testimony to the Prophetic Miracle

Now, I was there with a Welsh geologist who is not a Muslim, scientist. And we filmed him outside of the Haram. And we have him on tape. And this lava flow went towards the city. And right before it got to Medina, it literally begins to go uphill. Against the force of gravity.

It goes up towards Mount Uhud. And I asked him, why did it turn like that? Because you can see it on the satellite thing. He said, I have no scientific explanation for that. As a PhD in geology, I have no scientific explanation. He said, I heard people prayed. And I guess their prayers got answered.

And then I asked him, how far would have this light been seen? He said, this was massive. It would have been seen probably to the borders of Iraq.