Can we see Allah? - An Ashari Perspective.

ABU'L HASAN AL ASHARI'S EXPLAINATION OF THE SIGHT OF ALLAH ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT.

⇸Imam Abu Musa Al Ashari wrote a master piece named "Al Ibanah An Usul Ad Diyanah". In that book is the Chapter containing the Kalam to Prove the visibility of God to sight (absār) in the next world." He Writes,

God has said, “ On that day shall faces beam with light,” -meaning “shall shine,”—“ looking towards their Lord,”—“meaning “seeing.” The vision can be only one of the following kinds: (a) God means the regard of scrutiny as when He says, “ Can they not look up to the clouds, how they are created? or (b) He means the regard of expectation, as when He says, “They await but a single blast",[1] or (c) He means the regard of sight. Now God cannot mean the regard of reflection and scrutiny, because the next world is not the abode of scrutiny, and He cannot mean the regard of expectation, because, since “vision" and “face” are mentioned together, “vision” means the vision of the eyes, which are in the face (just as, when the lexicographers mention the vision of the heart and say, “Look upon this thing with thine heart,” its meaning is not the vision of the eyes) and if this is true, since “vision” and “face” are mentioned together, “vision” does not mean the regard of expectation that is in the heart. Besides, surely the regard of expectation does not exist in Paradise, because expectation is accompanied by misgivings and uncertainty, while those who dwell in Paradise possess there such peaceful, pleasant, enduring life as neither eye has seen nor ear heard, and since this is so, they cannot be in a state of expectation, for whenever they think of anything, it is theirs by the very thought. Since that is true, God cannot have in mind the regard of fellow-feeling (ta‘attuf)[2] because creatures cannot entertain this sentiment towards their Creator. Since three kinds of vision fail to answer the purpose, the fourth kind is certain, namely, that the meaning of His words “looking towards their Lord” is that they are seeing, they see their Lord. 

Among the things that invalidate the belief of the Mu'tazilah that God meant, by His words “looking towards their Lord,” the regard of expectation, is the fact that He said “looking towards their Lord,” whereas the regard of expectation as they understand it cannot be connected with His use of the word “towards,” because, among the Arabs, it is not correct to say “towards ” with reference to the regard of expectation. Do you not agree that God, when He said, “They await but a single blast,” did not say “towards,” since His meaning was expectation! He has quoted from Bilqis: “and await what my envoys bring back” and thus, since she meant expectation, she did not say “towards.” 

Imru' 'l-Qays says: 

If you two will await me but an hour,  Beside Umm Jundub you’ll afford me time)" [3]

Therefore, since he meant expectation, he did not say “towards.” Hence, since God said “looking towards their Lord,” we know that He did not mean expectation, but meant only the regard of sight; and since God connected the vision with the mention of the face, He meant the vision of the eyes that are in the face, just as He has said, “We have seen thee turning thy face towards every part of heaven; but We will have thee turn....” [4] and thus He mentioned the face, but meant only the turning of his eyes towards heaven in expectation of the descent of the angel upon him, when God shifted him from the Qiblah of Jerusalem to the Ka‘abah. 

If anybody says, “Why do you not say that, by His words ‘looking towards their Lord,’ He meant only ‘looking towards the reward of their Lord?,” the answer is: The reward of God is something other than Himself. God said “looking towards their Lord,” but He did not say “looking towards something other than Himself.” The Qur'an is to be understood literally, and it is not for us to understand it in any other way, except by proof; otherwise it is to be understood literally. Do you not think that, since God said, “Pray to Me and serve Me,” nobody can say He meant something other than Himself and understand these words in any but a literal way? Wherefore, if that is so, since He says “looking towards their Lord,” we cannot, without proof, understand the Qur'an in any but a literal way. Furthermore, it may be said to the Mu‘tazilah: If you may think that by God’s words “looking towards their Lord,” He meant only that they were looking towards something other than Himself, why not somebody else say that by His words “ The eyes do not reach Him,”[5] God meant “They do not reach something other than Himself,” and did not mean that they do not reach Him! And this is a distinction they have not the capacity to make.  n

⇸Note:- Mutazila believe that God will not beheld by sight but they disagree as to whether or not He will be beheld by the hearts. Abu'l Hudayl and most of the Mutazila say, "We shall see God with our hearts, in the sense that we shall know Him through our Hearts."

[1] Al Qur'an, 36:49.

[2] Affection.

[3] Diwan Al Shafa'i.

[4] Al Qur'an, 2:139.

[5] Al Qur'an, 6:103.

Mari'fat in Muslim Theology (Kalam) and Mysticism

MARIF'AH IN THE KALAM OF AL MATURIDI, AL ASHARI AND AHL AL SUFFIYA

Al Maturidi’s view on ma‘rifa (the highest level of knowledge to know of Allah) is based on the human thought and reason. It can be understood either that ma‘rifa can be obtained by the use of merely human reasoning and also that human reasoning is capable of obtaining ma‘rifa. It is reasonable that Al-Maturidi comes to the opinion that everything has its own character of good and bad.

On the contrary, Al-Ash‘ari viewed that ma‘rifa is based on God’s provision and guide. Consequently, good and bad are also decided by Syari (naturally).

Compared to that of Al-Ash‘ari, it is understandable that Al Maturidi’s views on human thought and reasoning seem to fit with Mu‘tazila’s way of thinking. But it  does not mean that Al-Maturidi is a Mu’tazili, however. Despite Al-Maturidi’s acceptance of human thought and reasoning that makes him, to some extent, close to Mu‘tazila’s way of thinking, he is still different from Mu‘tazila. It is in this sense, actually that Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahrah shares his opinion and states that:

“…such is close to the opinion of Mu‘tazila. However, Mu‘tazila followers think that ma‘rifatullah is obliged in mind. The followers of Al-Maturidiyya do not decide such thought, but they think that the obligation of ma‘rifatullah may be found through the fact of mind. This obligation never brings into reality, except Allah, the Supreme One.

The term marifa does not figure in the Quran, [ilm being the term used for knowledge; and Al-Alim, the All-Knowing, is given as a Divine Name, whereas Al-arif is not. Likewise, in the Hadith literature, ilm greatly overshadows marifa. In this regard, two points should be made: first, the notion of ilm in the first generations of

Islam was flexible enough to encompass knowledge both of the contingent domain and the transcendent order. The concept of knowledge at this time, along with a range of other concepts, had a suppleness, a polyvalence, and a depth that was plumbed by the individual in the measure of his spiritual sensitivity: there was no need for a separate word to designate a specifically spiritual kind of knowledge.

Secondly, the Sufis who came to discuss marifa as a distinct form of knowledge were able to quote and interpret certain key verses and ahadith as referring implicitly to the kind of knowledge they were seeking to elucidate.[1] One verse of central importance in this connection is the following:

I created not the jinn and mankind except that they might worship Me. (51: 56)

In his Kitab Al-Luma, Abu Nasr Al-Sarraj (d. 378/988) in common with many other Sufis,[2] reports the comment of Ibn Abbas: the word ‘worship’ here means ‘knowledge’ (marifa), so that the phrase illa li-yabuduni (except that they might worship Me) becomes illa li-yarifuni (except that they might know Me).[3] The very purpose of the creation of man thus comes to be equated with that knowledge of God which constitutes the most profound form of worship. This view dovetails with the hadith qudsi, (a holy utterance by God through the Prophet) so frequently cited by the Sufis: ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, so I created the world.’ The word for ‘known’ here is u'raf: ma'rifa thus appears again here as the ultimate purpose of creation in general, a purpose which is realized and mirrored most perfectly through the sage who knows God through knowing himself. For, according to another much-stressed hadith: ‘Whose knoweth himself knows his Lord’-again, the word for knowing is ar'afa. We shall return to this altogether fundamental principle in the final section of this essay. The question that presents itself at this point is why it should have been necessary for the Sufis to adopt the term marifa in contradistinction to ilm, [4] a process that becomes visible from around the third/ninth century.[5] The answer to this question can be stated thus: it was in this period that various dimensions of the intellectual tradition of Islam- theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, to mention the most important—began to crystallize into distinct ‘sciences’ (ulu'm) each of which laid claim to ilm as its preserve, thus imparting to ilm its own particular accentuation and content.[6] What these disciplines had in common was a confinement of the notion of ilm within the boundaries of formal, discursive, abstract processes of thought. For the Sufis to give the name [ilm to their direct, concrete, spiritual mode of knowledge was henceforth to risk associating the spiritual path of realization with a mental process of investigation. This is how Hujwiri expresses the difference between the two types of knowledge:

"The Sufi Shaykhs give the name of marifat (gnosis) to every knowledge that is allied with (religious) practice and feeling (hal) [7] and the knower thereof they call a'rif: On the other hand, they give the name of ilm to every knowledge that is stripped of spiritual meaning and devoid of religious practice, and one who has such knowledge they call alim".[8]

 [1]  Also, it was held that through mari'fa the less obvious, underlying, and esoteric dimensions of scripture could be grasped. Al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) writes that the inner meaning of many verses and ahadıth can be understood only through muka'shafa i.e mystical unveiling; muka'shafa is closely connected with marifa, sometimes being synonymous with it and at other times being a path leading to it as the final goal. See F. Jabre, La Notion de la ma'rifa chez Ghazali (Paris: Traditions des Lettres Orientales, 1958), 24–6.

[2] Data Ali Hujweri, Kashf Al-Mahjub p. 267, and Qushayri (d. 465/1074) in his famous Risala, trans. by B. R. von Schlegel as Principles of Sufism (Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan Press, 1990), 316. 

[3] R. A. Nicholson (ed.), Kitab Al-Luma (London: E. J. Gibb Memorial Series, 22, 1963), Arabic text, 40.

[4] It would be wrong to say that this process was either uniform or unilateral. The two terms were frequently to be found as synonyms within Sufi texts; sometimes marifa would be described as a form of ilm, and vice versa; and there was no unanimity on the question of marifa being superior to ilm. See Kalabadhi’s (d. 385/995) Kitab Al Ta'arruf li madhhab Ahl Al-tasawwuf: The Doctrine of the Sufis, trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), ch. 22, Their variance as to the nature of gnosis’. For the use of the two terms as synonyms, see Abu Sa'id Al-Kharraz’s (d. 286/899) Kitab Al-Sidq: The Book of Truthfulness, trans. A. J. Arberry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 49–50, Arabic text, 60. Also it should be noted that even the Sufi most frequently cited in connection with the first formal articulation of ma'rifa. D'hul-Nun Al-Misri (d. 245/859), speaks of the marifa of the common folk, and that of the [ulama], and that of the saints. See Farıd Al-Din Attar’s Tadhkirat al-Awliya], ed. R. A. Nicholson, (London: Luzac, 1905), part 1, Persian text 127. Finally, regarding the question of which is superior, ma'rifa or ilm, Ibn Al-Arabi writes that the apparent disagreement is only a verbal one: it is the selfsame knowledge of the supernal verities that is in question, whether this be called ma'rifa or ilm. See W. C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (New York: State University of New York Press,1989), 149

[5] One can find, prior to this time, scattered references to the term in a specifically Sufi context. For example: Ibrahim bin Adham (d. 160/777) is said to have developed the notion of ma'rifa (M. Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad: A Study of the Life and Teachings of Harith bin Asad Al Muhasibi (London: Sheldon Press, 1935), 73. The lady Umm al-Darda], a traditionist of the first century Hijra, was reported as saying, ‘The most excellent knowledge (ilm) is the gnosis (al-marifa)’ (cited in Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 139). 

[6] The presumption by others of ilm as a technical term prevented the Sufis permanently from selecting ilm for employment as one of the numerous technical terms of their own vocabulary and from using it to designate by it one of their specific states and stations. Since ma'rifa and yaqin lent themselves without much difficulty to doubling for ilm, they were indeed widely substituted for it (ibid. 165). 13 See V. Danner, ‘The Early Development of Sufism in S. H. Nasr (ed.), Islamic Spirituality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), i. 254. 

[7] This should be translated as ‘spiritual state’. The word ‘feeling’ is far too vague a translation of hal. 

[8] Kashf Al-Mahjub, 382. Much the same is said by Qushayri in his Risala, in the chapter titled Al- Marifatu bi-Llah’, 316.

[Pic of a believer seeking Intercession in the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (RA)]

The Concept of God

 

⧫GOD EXPLAINED THROUGH PHILOSOPHY

The Philosophers have always agreed on the unity of God (Monotheism) and have left back extensive literature based on pure intellect and rationality, proving it. The core doctrine was purely explained through intellect so as to make it acceptable for every human belonging to different communities and religions. We see a lot of people trying to explain polytheism through their "revelations" and "sacred texts" which makes it impossible for the people of other communities to accept it. Here, I quote Shaykh Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who has beautifully explained the concept of Monotheism.

He says,"In the first Shahadah[1] "Lā  ilāha illa’Llāh, usually translated as “there is no divinity but the Divine,” but which in its most profound sense means, 'THERE IS NO REALITY OUTSIDE OF THE ABSOLUTE REALITY,' thereby negating all that is other than Allah. This formula which is the Quranic basis of the Sufi doctrine of the Unity of Being (wahdat aI-wujud) does not imply that there is a substantial continuity between God and the world, or any form of pantheism or monism; rather, it means that "THERE CANNOT BE TWO ORDERS OF REALITY INDEPENDENT TO EACH OTHER."[2]

[1]Shahadah: A Muslims profession of faith (There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger). 

[2] There cannot be two certain (absolute) realities existing independently to each other as each reality has its own nature, attributes and essence. Hence it is not necessary for them to exist without any differences. Also, They cant be dependent on each other, as it makes them fallible (which totally goes against the natural law and concept of God)

⇸The above Paragraph is taken from the book, "The Introduction To Islamic Cosmological Doctrines", by Shaykh Hossein Nasr, Pg 5.