Ibn Khaldun in his Prolegomenon to History gives a rapid survey of what he calls the “traditioned sciences” (see chapter 5 above), and in it he takes up the question of theology, first offering his rather general definition of its nature and function.
The duties of the Muslim may concern either the body or the heart. The duties of the heart are concerned with faith and the distinction between what is to be believed and what is not to be believed. This concerns the articles of faith which deal with the essence and the attributes of God, the events of the Resurrection, Paradise, punishment and predestination, and entails discussion and defense of these subjects with the help of intellectual arguments. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 6.9) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:438]
Islam in fact knew two theologies. The first was the Greeks’ science about God, often called metaphysics after the Aristotelian work that was the Muslims’ chief source of instruction in it. The second was what was called in Arabic by Jews, Muslims, and Christians kalam and has been translated throughout as “dialectical theology.” Unlike metaphysics, which began with the premises of pure reason, dialectical theology in Islam resembled the Christians’ “sacred theology,” which took the givens of revelation as its starting point and attempted to demonstrate dialectically the conclusions that flowed from them. These two aspects of dialectical theology are clearly present in Ibn Khaldun’s description of it, which includes both the Quranic menu of its subject matter and its method, “intellectual arguments.”
Ibn Khaldun returns to the earliest days of Islam and undertakes to provide his own sketch of the conditions that brought this discipline into being, though with a notable, and understandable, reluctance to trace it to Christian origins, as some others had. Ibn Khaldun begins by summing up what might be called the “articles of faith,” the propositions that every Muslim must believe in order to be saved (see chapter 5 above). He then continues:
These main articles of faith are proven by the logical evidence that exists for them. Evidence for them from the Quran and the Prophetic traditions also is ample. The scholars showed the way to them and the religious leaders verified them. However, later on, there occurred differences of opinion concerning the details of these articles of faith. Most of the difference concerned the “ambiguous verses” of the Quran [see chapter 4 above]. This led to hostility and disputation. Logical argumentation was used in addition to the traditional material. In this way, the science of dialectical theology originated.
We shall now explain this summary statement in detail. In many verses of the Quran the worshiped Master is described as being absolutely devoid (of human attributes), and this in absolute terms requiring no interpretation. All these verses are negative (in their statements). They are clear on the subject. It is necessary to believe them, and statements of the Lawgiver (Muhammad) and the men around him and the men of the second generation have explained them in accordance with their plain meaning.
Then there are a few verses in the Quran suggesting anthropomorphism, with reference to either the essence or the attributes of God. The early Muslims gave preference to the evidence for God’s freedom from human attributes because it was simple and clear. They knew that anthropomorphism is absurd, but they decided that those (anthropomorphic) verses were the word of God and therefore believed them, without trying to investigate or interpret their meaning…. But there were a few innovators in their time who occupied themselves with those “ambiguous verses” and delved into anthropomorphism. One group operated with the plain [that is, literal] meaning of the relevant verses. They assumed anthropomorphism for God’s essence, in that they believed that He had hands, feet and a face. Thus they adopted a clear-cut anthropomorphism and were in opposition to the verses stating God is devoid of human attributes…. The people who gave consideration to the anthropomorphic verses then tried to escape from the anthropomorphic abomination by stating that God has “a body unlike (ordinary human) bodies.” … Another group turned to anthropomorphism with regard to the attributes of God. They assumed direction, sitting, descending, voice, letter (sound) and similar things on the part of God. Their stated opinions imply anthropomorphism, and like the former group they took refuge in statements like “a voice unlike voices,” “a direction unlike directions,” “descending unlike descending.” …
Later on the sciences and the crafts increased. People were eager to write systematic works and to do research in all fields. The speculative theologians wrote on God’s freedom from human attributes. At that juncture the Mu‘tazila innovation came into being. The Mu‘tazila extended the subject (of God’s freedom from human physical attributes) to the negative verses and decided to deny God’s possession of the ideational attributes of knowledge, power … and life, in addition to denying their consequences…. The Mu‘tazila further decided to deny God’s possession of volition. This forced them to deny predestination, because predestination requires the existence of a volition prior to the created things. They also decided to deny God’s hearing and vision, because both hearing and vision are corporeal accidents…. They further decided to deny God speech for reasons similar to those they used in connection with hearing and vision…. Thus the Mu‘tazila decided that the Quran was created [see chapter 3 above]. This was an innovation; the early Muslims had clearly expressed the contrary view. The damage done by this innovation was great. Certain leading Mu‘tazilites indoctrinated certain Caliphs with it, and the people were forced to adopt it [see chapter 3 above]. The Muslim religious leaders opposed them. Because of their opposition, it was permissible to flog and kill many of them. This caused orthodox people to rise in defense of the articles of faith with logical evidence and to push back the innovations.
The leader of the speculative theologians, Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari [d. 935 C.E.] took care of that. He mediated between the different approaches. He disavowed anthropomorphism and recognized the (existence of the) ideational attributes. He restricted God’s freedom from human attributes to the extent to which it had been recognized by early Muslims, and which had been recognized by the proofs stating the general applicability (of the principle) to special cases. He recognized the four ideational attributes [that is, of knowledge, power, volition, and life], as well as hearing, vision and speech, as an essential function of God, and this with the help of both logical and traditional methods. He refuted the innovators in all these respects. He discussed with them their stated opinions with regard to (God’s concern for) human welfare and what is best for man, and their definition of good and evil, which they had invented on the basis of their innovation. He perfected the dogmas concerning the rising of the dead, the circumstances of the Resurrection, Paradise and Hell, and reward and punishment. Ash‘ari added a discussion of the Imamate [see chapter 3 above], because the Imamite Shi‘ites at that time suggested the novel idea that the Imamate was one of the articles of faith and that it was the duty of the Prophet as well as of the Muslim nation to fix (the succession to) the Imamate and to free the person who would become the Imam from any responsibility in this respect. However, the Imamate is at best a matter of public interest and social organization; it is not an article of faith. But it was added to the problems of this discipline. The whole was called “the science of dialectical theology.” (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 6.14) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 3:45–50]
Even as this was happening, during the roughly century and a half span between the Mu‘tazilite beginnings about 800 C.E. and the death of Ash‘ari in 935, a great many Greek philosophical works were translated into Arabic, many of them done, in fact, under the patronage of the very Caliph Ma’mun (813–833 C.E.) who had given ear to the Mu‘tazilites. The effects were not long in being felt on the nascent discipline of dialectical theology, not directly from the translations but from the adaptation of the analytical method into their own work by certain Muslim thinkers, as Ibn Khaldun continues.
Thus Ash‘ari’s approach was perfected and became one of the best speculative disciplines and religious sciences. However, the forms of its arguments are, at times, not technical [that is, not scientifically rigorous] because the scholars (of Ash‘ari’s time) were simple and the science of logic which probes arguments and examines syllogisms had not yet made its appearance in Islam. Even if some of it had existed, the theologians would not have used it because it was so closely related to the philosophical sciences, which are altogether different from the beliefs of the religious law and were, therefore, avoided by them…. After that the science of logic spread in Islam; people studied it. And they made a distinction between it and the philosophical sciences in that logic was merely a norm and yardstick for arguments and served to probe the arguments of the philosophical sciences as well as those of other disciplines.
Then, (once they had accepted the legitimacy of logic) scholars studied the premises the earlier theologians had established. They refuted most of them with the help of arguments leading them to a different opinion. Many of these (earlier) arguments were derived from philosophical discussions of physics and metaphysics, and when the scholars now probed them with the yardstick of logic, it showed that the earlier arguments (like those used by Ash‘ari) were applicable only to those other (philosophical) disciplines and not to dialectical theology. But they did not believe that if the arguments were wrong, the conclusion was also wrong…. This approach differed in its technical terminology from the earlier one; it was called “the school of recent scholars” [or, “the modern school”], and their approach often included a refutation of the philosophers as well, where the opinions of the latter differed from the articles of faith. They considered the philosophers the enemies of the articles of faith because in most respects there is a relationship between the opinions of the innovators and the opinions of the philosophers.
The first scholar to write in accordance with the (new) theological approach was al-Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.). He was followed by the imam Ibn al-Khatib [Fakhr al-Din al-Razi; d. 1209 C.E.]. A large number of scholars followed in their steps and adhered to their tradition. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 6.14) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 3:50–52]
Ibn Khaldun follows the evolution of dialectical theology down closer to his own time.
If one considers how this discipline (of dialectical theology) originated and how scholarly discussion was incorporated in it step by step, and how, during this process, scholars always assumed the correctness of the articles of faith and paraded proofs and arguments in their defense, one will realize that the character of this discipline is as we have established it, and that the discipline cannot go beyond those limits. However, the two approaches have been mixed up by recent scholars: the problems of theology have been confused with those of philosophy. This has gone so far that one discipline is no longer distinguishable from the other. The student cannot learn theology from the books of the recent scholars, and the same situation confronts the student of philosophy. Such mixing was done by Baydawi (d. 1286 C.E.) … , and by later, non-Arab scholars in all their works….
The approach of the early Muslims can be reconciled with the beliefs of the science of dialectical theology only if one follows the old approach of the theologians (and not the mixed approach of more recent scholars). The basic work here is the Right Guidance of al-Juwayni (d. 1083 C.E.), as well as works that follow its example. Those who want to inject a refutation of the philosophers into their dogmatic beliefs must use the books of Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din Razi. These latter do show some divergencies from the old technique, but do not make such a confusion of problems and subjects as is found in the approach of the recent scholars who have come after them.
Ibn Khaldun then sums up with his own reflections on speculative or dialectical theology. The year, it will be recalled, is 1377 C.E.
In general, it must be known that this science, the science of dialectical theology, is not something that is necessary to the contemporary student. Heretics and innovators have been destroyed. The orthodox religious leaders have given us protection against heretics and innovators in their systematic works and treatments. Logical arguments were needed only when they defended and supported (their views with them). Now, all that remains of those arguments is a certain amount of discussion, from most of whose ambiguities and inferences the Creator can be considered to be free. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 6.14) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 3:53–54]
It was not, then, an entirely successful enterprise in Islam, this dialectical theology. The fundamentalists regarded its use of intellectual arguments as unnecessarily rationalistic, while more philosophically sophisticated Muslims criticized its lack of scientific rigor. Ghazali—for Ibn Khaldun the first of the “modernists” in theology—a scholar who had studied the methods of discursive reasoning used by Greek and Muslim philosophers, understood both the usefulness and the limits of dialectical theology, and like Ibn Khaldun, he emphasizes its essentially defensive function.
God sent to His servants by the mouth of His Messenger, in the Quran and the prophetic traditions, a creed which is the truth and whose contents are the basis of man’s welfare in both religious and secular affairs. But Satan too sent, in the suggestions of heretics, things contrary to orthodoxy; men tended to accept his suggestions and almost corrupted the true creed for its adherents. So God brought into being the class of (dialectical) theologians, and moved them to support traditional orthodoxy with the weapon of systematic theology by laying bare the confused doctrines invented by the heretics at variance with traditional orthodoxy. This is the origin of (dialectical) theology and theologians.
In due course a group of theologians performed the task to which God invited them; they successfully preserved orthodoxy, defended the creed received from the prophetic source and rectified heretical innovations. Nevertheless in so doing they based their arguments on premises which they took from their opponents and which they were compelled to admit by naive belief or the consensus of the community or bare acceptance of the Quran and the prophetic traditions. For the most part their efforts were devoted to making explicit the contradictions of their opponents and criticizing them in respect of the logical consequences of what they admitted.
This might serve with Muslims who were willing to start at the same shared premises, but it would hardly do with those other philosophers and theologians trained in the Hellenic mode and committed to beginning with the first principles of reason.
This was of little use in the case of one who admitted nothing at all save logically necessary truths…. It is true that, when theology appeared as a recognized discipline and much effort had been expended in it over a considerable period of time, the theologians, becoming very earnest in their endeavors to defend orthodoxy by the study of what things really are, embarked on the study of substances and accidents with their natures and properties. But since that was not the (principal) aim of their science, they did not deal with the question thoroughly in their thinking and consequently did not arrive at results sufficient to dispel universally the darkness of confusion due to the different views of men. I do not exclude the possibility that for others than myself these results have been sufficient; indeed, I do not doubt that this has been so for quite a number. But these results were mingled with naive beliefs in certain matters which are not included among first principles. (Ghazali, Deliverer from Error 81–83) [GHAZALI 1953: 27–29]
One of the areas in which the early Muslim proponents of dialectical theology used their newly discovered skills was in explaining the various attributes attached to God in the Quran, “merciful,” “compassionate,” “powerful,” “seeing,” “knowing,” “hearing,” and the like. Some raise an immediate problem: how indeed can God see without eyes, or shall we credit Him with eyes as well? The problem is anthropomorphism, a problem that, upon closer inspection, all the attributes raise in one way or another. The early dialectical theologians attempted to address the problem in the same time-honored fashion invoked by Jewish and Christian theologians, the prudent use of allegorical exegesis (see chapter 4 above).
The allegorizing of the divine attributes is an issue that never quite disappeared in Islam, and it was one of the grounds of choice for Muslim conservatives—the overwhelming number of them lawyers—to confront the theologians. Among the lawyers it was the followers of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855 C.E.) who took the most conservative positions of all. A Hanbalite spokesman in late twelfth-century Damascus was Ibn Qudama (d. 1223 C.E.), whose works include one pointedly entitled The Prohibition of the Study of the Works of the Dialectical Theologians. He is here concluding.
We have already clearly shown by what has preceded, the evilness of the science of dialectical theology by virtue of its very source, the censure of it by our religious leaders, the universal agreement of the learned men that its advocates are partisans of heretical innovations and error, that they are not considered to belong to the ranks of learned men, that whoever occupies himself with it becomes a heretic and will not prosper. (Ibn Qudama, Prohibition 90) [IBN QUDAMA 1962: 36–37]
The issue is a familiar one, and it serves to clarify what precisely constitutes heresy in Islam.
Allegorical interpretation is a novelty in religion. Now a novelty is any doctrine in religion with regard to which the Companions [that is, the generation of Muhammad’s “contemporaries,” the latter term construed broadly] had died without ceasing to keep their silence. Novelty in religion is the heretical innovation against which our Prophet has cautioned us, and of which he informed us that it is the most evil of things. He has said (in a tradition): “The most evil things are the innovated ones.” He has also said (likewise in a tradition): “Keep to my course of conduct and the course of conduct of the (first four) rightly guided Caliphs after me; hold fast there to.” “Beware of innovated things; for every innovation is a heretical innovation, and every heretical innovation is an error.” Now, the allegorical interpreter has deserted the course of conduct of the Apostle of God and that of the rightly guided Caliphs; he is an inventor of heretical novelties, gone astray by virtue of the tradition mentioned. (Ibn Qudama, Prohibition 56) [IBN QUDAMA 1962: 21–22]
How then is one to deal with all the apparent anthropomorphisms used to characterize God in the Quran and the Prophetic traditions? Simply by accepting them, Ibn Qudama asserts, and offers a clear exposition of the conservative position in theology, the doctrine known in shorthand fashion as “Without Howing.” The authority is no less than the eponym of the school himself.
An (earlier) Hanbalite has said: I asked Abu Abdullah Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal about those traditions which relate that God will be seen, and that He sets His foot down, and other relations similar to these. Whereupon Abu Abdullah answered: We believe in them, and accept them as true, without rejecting any part of them, when their chains of transmitters are sound; nor do we refuse the statements of the Apostle, for we know that what he has brought to us is true.
God should not be described in excess of His own description of Himself, boundless and immeasurable: “There is nothing like Him! He is the Hearing, the Seeing” (Quran 42:11). Therefore we say exactly what He has said, and describe Him as He has described Himself, without going beyond His description, nor removing from Him any of His attributes merely for fear of some possible slander which might be leveled against us. We believe in these traditions, we acknowledge them, and we allow them to pass intact as they have come down to us, without being able to understand the how of them, nor fathom their intended sense, except in accordance with his own description of Himself; and He is, according to His own description, the Hearing, the Seeing, boundless, immeasurable. His attributes proceed from Him and are His own. We do not go beyond the Quran or the traditions of the Prophet and his Companions; nor do we know the how of these, save by the acknowledgement of the Apostle and the confirmation of the Quran. (Ibn Qudama, Prohibition 19) [IBN QUDAMA 1962: 8–9; emphasis added]
Ibn Qudama’s view that dialectical theology constituted a reprehensible innovation in Islam was hardly novel. The charge had been leveled against theologians almost from the beginning; indeed, Ash‘ari himself (d. 935 C.E.), one of the fathers of the discipline, had taken up arms against this allegation in a tract called On Thinking Well of Engaging in the Science of Theology. The Prophet, it was said by the opponents of theology, knew nothing about such newfangled notions as “motion and rest, body and accident, accidental modes and states.” Wrong, says Ash‘ari.
The Apostle of God did know these questions about which they have asked, and he was not ignorant of any detail involved in them. However, they did not occur in his time in such specific form that he should have, or should not have, discussed them—even though their basic principles were present in the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet. But whenever a question arose which was related to religion from the standpoint of the Law, men discussed it, and inquired into it, and disputed about it, and debated and argued…. Such questions, too numerous to mention, arose in their days, and in the case of each one there had come no explicit determination from the Prophet. For if he had given explicit instructions concerning all that, they would not have differed over those questions, and the differences would not have lasted till now.
The mere fact of these differences of opinion shows that men investigated, and will continue to investigate, matters of importance on which neither the Quran nor the tradition gives guidance. More, Ash‘ari continues, the analogical method so typical of theology was the same one used in these investigations.
But even though there was no explicit instruction of the Apostle of God regarding each one of these questions, they referred and likened each to something which had been determined explicitly in the Book of God, and the Tradition, and their own independent judgment. Such questions, then, which involved judgments on unprecedented secondary causes, they referred to those determinations of the Law which are derivative, and which are to be sought only along the line of revelation and the Prophetic tradition. But when new and specific questions pertaining to basic dogmas arise, every intelligent Muslim ought to refer judgment on them to the sum of principles accepted on the grounds of reason, sense experience, intuition, etc.
Judgment on legal questions which belong to the category of what is passed down by tradition is to be based on reference to legal principles which likewise belong to the category of the traditioned, and judgment on questions involving the data of reason and the senses should be a matter of referring every such instance to (something within) its own category, without confounding the rational with the traditioned or the traditioned with the rational. So if dialectical theology on the creation of the Quran and on the atom … had originated in those precise terms in the Prophet’s time, he would have discussed and explained it, just as he explained and discussed all the specific questions which did originate in his time. (Ash‘ari, The Science of Dialectical Theology 21–22) [ASH‘ARI 1953: 130–131]
As some thinkers noted, there was, however, a fatal flaw in the dialectical theology of the medieval Muslims and their Jewish imitators, namely, that it was mostly dialectic and very little theology. But there were also those few determined rationalists who, as Ghazali described them, “admitted nothing at all save logically necessary truths,” to wit, the partisans of metaphysics or rationalistic theology on the Greek model. In his autobiographical Deliverer from Error Ghazali offers a capsule history of this kind of theology from its point of origin among the Hellenes.
The study of philosophy began, Ghazali explains, with the “Materialists,” who simply denied a Creator and posited an eternal cycle of everlasting generation, “animals from seed and seed from animals.” The second group, the “Naturalists,” were constrained by the order and excellence of nature to admit the existence of a Creator God, but they deny any spiritual existence and so the immortality of the soul and an afterlife. Finally there are the “more modern” philosophers called “Theists,” who include Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the last of whom “systematized logic for them and organized the sciences, securing a higher degree of accuracy and bringing them to maturity.”
The Theists in general attacked the two previous groups, the Materialists and the Naturalists, and exposed their defects so effectively that others were relieved of the task…. Aristotle, moreover, attacked his predecessors among the Theistic philosophers, especially Plato and Socrates, and went so far in his criticisms that he separated himself from them. Yet he too retained a residue of their unbelief and heresy from which he did not manage to free himself. We must therefore reckon as unbelievers both those philosophers themselves and their followers among the Islamic philosophers, such as Ibn Sina (or Avicenna), al-Farabi and others; in transmitting the philosophy of Aristotle, however, none of the Islamic philosophers has accomplished anything comparable to the two men named…. (Ghazali, Deliverer from Error 87–88) [GHAZALI 1953: 31–32]
The principal area of unbelief lay, according to Ghazali, in the science called theology or metaphysics.
Here occur most of the errors of the philosophers. They are unable to satisfy the conditions of proof they lay down in logic and consequently differ much from one another here. The views of Aristotle, as expounded by Farabi and Avicenna, are close to those of the Islamic writers. All their errors are comprised under twenty heads, on three of which they must be reckoned infidels and on seventeen heretical innovators…. The three points in which they differ from all Muslims are as follows:
(1) [On the physical reality of Paradise and Hell], they say that for bodies there is no Resurrection: it is bare spirits which are rewarded or punished; and the rewards and punishments are spiritual, not bodily. They certainly speak true in affirming the spiritual ones, since these do exist as well; but they speak falsely in denying the bodily ones and in their pronouncements disbelieve the revelation.
(2) [On divine providence], they say that God knows universals, but not particulars. This too is plain unbelief. The truth is that “there does not escape Him the weight of an atom in the heavens or in the earth” (Quran 34:3).
(3) [On the eternity of the world], they say that the world is everlasting, without beginning. But no Muslim has adopted any such view on this question. (Ghazali, Deliverer from Error 96–97) [GHAZALI 1953: 35–36]
We shall shortly note the issue between theology and Islam on the subject of the afterlife; here we see one of Islam’s premier philosophers, al-Farabi, attempting to pick his careful way through the thorny and dangerous subject of divine providence.
Many people hold divergent beliefs concerning the Lord’s care of His creation. It is held by some that He cares for His creation in the same manner that a king cares for his subjects and their well-being, though without personally conducting the affairs of any of them, and without connection between Himself and any partner or wife; rather He appoints to the task someone who will undertake it and perform it, and in its performance do whatever right and justice demand.
Farabi makes no comment on that view, so it may be his own, though we cannot be certain. The second is distinctly not his opinion, however.
Others are of the opinion that His care is not sufficient short of His undertaking the personal management of each one of His creatures in each one of his actions, and directing him aright, and leaving none of His creatures to (the care of) others. It would then follow that He would be responsible for many actions which are defective, ignoble, and ugly, errors and abominable words and deeds, and when any of His creatures aims at attacking one of His clients—a reversal of truth merely for the sake of argument—He is his helper and responsible for leading him and guiding him…. And if they deny that He directs and helps such for some things, they must likewise deny the whole doctrine. Such principles give rise to wrong ideas and are the source of vicious and abominable ways of acting. (Farabi, Aphorisms of the Statesman 82)
Ghazali remained unconvinced by such explanations.
Among the most extreme and extravagant of men are a group of scholastic theologians who dismiss the Muslim common people as unbelievers and claim that whoever does not know scholastic theology in the form they recognize and does not know the prescriptions of the Holy Law according to the proofs which they have adduced is an unbeliever.
These people have constricted the vast mercy of God to His servants and made Paradise the preserve of a small clique of theologians. They have disregarded what is handed down by the Prophetic traditions, for it is clear that in the time of the Prophet, may God bless and save him, and in the time of the Companions of the Prophet, may God be pleased with them, the Islam of whole groups of rude Arabs was recognized, though they were busy worshiping idols. They did not concern themselves with the science of analogical proof and would have understood nothing of it if they had.
Whoever claims that theology, abstract proofs, and systematic classification are the foundations of belief is an innovator. Rather is belief a light which God bestows on the hearts of His creatures as a gift and a bounty from Him, sometimes through an explainable conviction from within, sometimes because of a dream in sleep, sometimes by seeing the state of bliss of a pious man and the transmission of his light through association and conversation with him, sometimes through one’s own state of bliss. (Ghazali, The Basis of Distinction 202)
And yet Ghazali was by no means a fundamentalist in the mold of Ibn Qudama. He understood both the attractions and the dangers of philosophy and science, but he was unwilling to permit the dangers to be used as a reason for dismissing the truth and the certitude that philosophy brought. Mathematics provides an almost classic instance.
None of its results are connected with religious matters, either to deny or affirm them. They are matters of demonstration which it is impossible to deny once they have been understood and apprehended. Nevertheless there are two drawbacks which arise from mathematics. The first is that every student of mathematics admires its precision and the clarity of its demonstrations. This leads him to believe in the philosophers (and scientists generally) and to think that all their sciences resemble this one in clarity and cogency. Further, he has already heard the accounts on everyone’s lips of their unbelief, their denial of God’s attributes and their contempt for revealed truth; he becomes an unbeliever merely by accepting them as authorities, and says to himself, “If (revealed) religion were true, it would not have escaped the notice of these men since they are so precise in this science.”
That is one extreme, seduction by mathematics; the other is no more attractive.
The second drawback arises from the man who is loyal to Islam but ignorant. He thinks that religion must be defended by rejecting every science connected with the philosophers, and so rejects all their sciences and accuses them of ignorance therein. He even rejects their theory of the eclipse of the sun and the moon, considering that what they say is contrary to religion…. A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences, seeing that there is nothing in revealed truth opposed to these sciences by way of either negation or affirmation, and nothing in these sciences opposed to the truths of revelation. (Ghazali, Deliverer from Error 90–91) [GHAZALI 1953: 33–34]
Ghazali had no brief for or interest in mathematics; it simply provided him, by the clarity and cogency of its demonstrations, with a casebook model for the truth of science, even the foreign and often heretical science of the Greeks and their Muslim followers. Ethics, on the other hand, with its judgments about conduct and morality, is a rival of revealed religion, and so a more interesting and complicated case. There are, for example, instances in which the teachings of philosophical ethics, a well-defined branch of the Hellenic philosophical tradition, are identical with those of the Muslim moral theologians working with the data of revelation, as Ghazali saw himself doing. Two explanations are possible: that the former borrowed from the latter—an argument already familiar from Philo—or that the truth of God is essentially one and so there should be little wonder that different groups can reach it by different means. “Ethics,” Ghazali begins, “consists in defining the characteristics and moral constitution of the soul and enumerating the various types of soul and the method of moderating and controlling them.” He continues:
This they (that is, the philosophers) borrow from the teaching of the mystics, those men of piety whose chief occupation is to meditate upon God, to oppose the passions, and to walk in the way leading to God by withdrawing from worldly pleasure. In their spiritual warfare they have learnt about the virtues and vices of the soul and the defects in its actions, and what they have learned they have clearly expressed. The philosophers have taken over this teaching and mingled it with their own disquisitions, furtively using this embellishment to sell their rubbishy wares more readily….
From this practice of the philosophers of incorporating in their books conceptions drawn from the prophets and the mystics, there arise two evil tendencies, one in their partisans and one in their opponents.
The evil tendency in the case of the opponent is serious. A crowd of men of slight intellect imagines that, since these ethical conceptions occur in the books of the philosophers mixed with their own rubbish, all reference to them must be avoided, and indeed any person mentioning them must be considered a liar. They imagine this because they heard of the conceptions in the first place only from the philosophers, and their weak intellects have concluded that, since their author is a falsifier, they must be false.
We have heard the argument before from Ghazali, in the case of those who wished to throw out all of mathematics, baby, bathwater, and eclipses of the sun and moon. Here, however, the instance is different.
This is like a man who hears a Christian assert, “There is no god but the God, and Jesus is the Messenger of God.” The man rejects this, saying, “This is a Christian conception,” and does not pause to ask himself whether the Christian is an infidel only in respect of his denial of the prophethood of Muhammad, peace be upon him. If he is an infidel only in respect of his denial of the prophethood of Muhammad, then he need not be contradicted in other assertions, true in themselves and not connected with his unbelief, even though these are also true in his eyes (like the Christian statement cited above).
Ghazali then passes onto far more personal terrain than a defense of the Christians’ right to be correct on certain religious matters.
To some of the statements made in our published works on the principles of the religious sciences an objection has been raised by a group of men whose understanding has not fully grasped the sciences and whose insight has not penetrated to the fundamentals of the systems. They think that these statements are taken from the works of the ancient philosophers, whereas the fact is that some of them are the product of reflections which occurred to me independently—it is not improbable that one foot should fall on another footprint—while others come from the revealed Scriptures, and in the case of the majority the sense, though perhaps not the actual words, is found in the works of the mystics.
After this not entirely spirited defense of his own originality, Ghazali comes to the difficult heart of the matter, the spoliatio Aegyptorum or, to use Ghazali’s own figure, honey in a cupping glass.
Suppose, however, that the statements (that is, certain moral teachings) are found only in the philosophers’ books. If they are reasonable in themselves and supported by proof, and if they do not contradict the Book and the Custom of the Prophet, then it is not necessary to abstain from using them. If we open this door, if we adopt the attitude of abstaining from every truth that the mind of a heretic has apprehended before us, we should be obliged to abstain from much that is true. We should be obliged to leave aside a great number of verses of the Quran and the traditions of the Messenger and the accounts of the early Muslims, and all the sayings of the philosophers and the mystics…. The lowest degree of education is to distinguish oneself from the ignorant ordinary man. The educated man does not loathe honey even if he finds it in the surgeon’s cupping-glass; he realizes that the cupping-glass does not essentially alter the honey. The natural aversion from it in such a case rests on popular ignorance, arising from the fact that the cupping-glass is made only for impure blood. Men imagine that the blood is impure because it is in the cupping-glass, and are not aware that the impurity is due to a property of the blood itself. (Ghazali, Deliverer from Error 99–105) [GHAZALI 1953: 38–42]
There were few in Islam who were willing to dispute Ghazali on this point; indeed, as is clear from Ibn Qudama’s position, many Muslims found Ghazali’s stance far too liberal when it came to the use of reason in thinking about God. The one voice raised against Ghazali in the name of philosophy was that of the Spanish scholar Ibn Rushd (d. 1198 C.E.), demonstrably the greatest student of the Hellenic philosophical tradition ever produced in Islam. Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers was countered point by point in Ibn Rushd’s Incoherence of the Incoherence. Here, however, we hear the man the West knew as Averroes speaking to the issue of philosophy in Islam in more general, and very Muslim, terms. We are now at the opposite pole from Ibn Qudama: not only is intellectual investigation not heresy; it is commanded by the Islamic law.
Praise be to God with all due praise, and a prayer for Muhammad, His chosen servant and Messenger. The purpose of this treatise is to examine, from the standpoint of the study of the (Islamic) Law, whether the study of philosophy and logic is allowed by the Law, or prohibited, or commanded, either by way of recommendation or as obligatory.
We say: If the activity of philosophy is no more than the study of existing beings and the reflection on them as indications of the Artisan (or Creator), that is, inasmuch as they are products of art, for beings also indicate the Artisan through our knowledge of the art in them, and the more perfect this knowledge is, the more perfect the knowledge of the Artisan becomes, and if the Law has encouraged and urged reflection on beings, then it is clear that what this name (of philosophy) signifies is either obligatory or recommended by the Law.
That the Law summons us to reflection on beings, and the pursuit of knowledge about them by the intellect, is clear from the several verses of the Book of God, blessed be He and exalted, such as the saying of the Exalted, “Reflect, you have vision” (Quran 59:2); this is textual authority for the obligation to use intellectual reasoning, or a combination of intellectual and legal reasoning. Another example is His saying, “Have you not studied the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, and whatever things God has created?” (Quran 8:185); this is a text urging the study of the totality of beings. Again, God the Exalted has taught that one of those whom He singularly honored by this knowledge was Abraham, peace be upon him, for the Exalted said, “So we made Abraham see the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, that he might be etc.” (Quran 2:5–6). The Exalted also said, “Do they not observe the camels, how they have been created, and the sky, how it has been raised up?” (Quran 2:6–7); and He said, “and they gave thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth” (Quran 2:7), and so in countless other verses.
Since it has now been established that the Law has rendered obligatory the study of beings by the intellect, and reflection on them, and since reflection is nothing more than inference and drawing out of the unknown from the known, and since this is reasoning or at any rate done by reasoning, therefore we are under an obligation to carry on our study of beings by intellectual reasoning. It is further evident that this manner of study, to which the Law summons and urges, is the most perfect kind of study using the most perfect kind of reasoning; and this is the kind called “demonstration.”
The Law, then, has urged us to have demonstrative knowledge of God the Exalted and all the beings of His creation. But it is preferable and even necessary for anyone who wants to understand God the Exalted and the other beings demonstratively to have first understood the kinds of demonstration and their conditions (of validity), and in what respects demonstrative reasoning differs from dialectical, rhetorical and fallacious reasoning. But this is not possible unless he has previously learned what reasoning as such is, and how many kinds it has, and which of them are valid and which invalid. This in turn is not possible unless he has previously learned the parts of reasoning, of which it is composed, that is, the premises and their kinds. Therefore he who believes in the Law and obeys its commands to study beings, ought prior to his study to gain a knowledge of these things, which have the same place in theoretical studies as instruments have in practical activities. (Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise 1–2) [AVERROES 1961: 44–46]
One objection can be easily dispensed with.
It cannot be objected: “This kind of study of intellectual reasoning is a heretical innovation since it did not exist among the first believers.” For the study of legal reasoning and its kinds is also something which has been discovered since the (time of) the first believers, yet it is not considered a heretical innovation. So the objector should believe the same about the study of intellectual reasoning. For this there is a reason, which is not the place to answer here. But most (masters) of this religion (that is, Islam) support intellectual reasoning, except a small group of gross literalists, who can be refuted by (sacred) texts. (Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise 3) [AVERROES 1961: 46]
Ibn Rushd was not, however, naive; he was well aware of the dangers to the faith, real or alleged, that are associated with the study of Greek philosophy.
From (all) this it is evident that the study of the books of the ancients is obligatory by (Islamic) Law, since their aim and purpose in their books is just the purpose to which the Law has urged us, and that whoever forbids the study of them to anyone who is fit to study them, that is, anyone who unites the two qualities of natural intelligence and religious integrity, is blocking people from the door by which the Law summons them to knowledge of God, the door of theoretical study which leads to the truest knowledge of Him; and such an act is the extreme of ignorance and estrangement from God the Exalted.
And if someone errs or stumbles in the study of these books owing to a deficiency in his natural capacity, or bad organization of his study of them, or being dominated by his passions, or not finding a teacher to guide him to an understanding of their contents, or a combination of all or more than one of these causes, it does not follow that one should forbid them to anyone who is qualified to study them. For this manner of harm which arises owing to them is attached to them by accident, not by essence; and when a thing is beneficial by its nature and essence, it ought not to be shunned because of something harmful contained in it by accident. This was the thought of the Prophet, peace be upon him, on the occasion when he ordered a man to give his brother honey to drink for his diarrhea, and the diarrhea increased after he had given him the honey; when the man complained to him about it, he said, “God spoke the truth; it was your brother’s stomach that lied.” We can even say that a man who prevents a qualified person from studying books of philosophy, because some of the most vicious people may be thought to have gone astray through their study of them, is like a man who prevents a thirsty person from drinking cool, fresh water until he dies from thirst because some people have choked to death on it. For death from water by choking is an accidental matter, but death by thirst is essential and elementary. (Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise 5–6) [AVERROES 1961: 48–49]
The philosopher and the theologian both claimed a privileged access to a knowledge of God, claims resting essentially on the primacy and autonomy of reason. But there was another such claim in Islam, as there had been in the two Abrahamic faiths that preceded it: the mystic too claimed the benefit of a privileged knowledge of God, primary, authentic and immediate, visionary, intuitive—a genuine gnosis.
Ghazali, who was in the unique position of being both a theologian and a mystic, has left us a comparative evaluation of the mystic’s inspired gnosis and the theologian’s discursively developed understanding in his Revivification of the Sciences of Religion. Both ways of knowing do indeed open a way to God, but there are fundamental and crucial differences between them, as he pedagogically explains in a chapter subtitled “Wherein there is set forth the difference between inspiration and study, between the way of the Sufis in discovering the truth and the way of those given over to speculative knowledge.”
Be aware that the types of knowledge which are not necessarily possessed by everyone come into the heart in different ways and the mode by which they arrive varies. At times they appear unexpectedly in the heart as if they had been thrown in from the heart knows not what source. At other times they are acquired by the method of intellectual elaboration and study. The knowledge which arises neither by way of acquisition nor by the operation of a deductive chain is called inspiration; that which comes about from intellectual elaboration is called examination or reflection.
The knowledge which presents itself in the heart of a sudden and without striving, study, or work on the part of the subject is of two types: the first of the kind that a man is unaware how it came to him or whence; the second carries with it an understanding of the means whereby it came, that is, the vision of the angel who cast it into the heart. The first type is called inspiration and breathes in the depths of the heart; the second is called revelation and properly belongs to the prophets. As for the first, it is characteristic of the saints and the pure of heart, while the previously mentioned type of knowledge, the kind acquired by means of intellectual elaboration, is proper to the learned.
After this somewhat scholastic introduction, Ghazali turns to more Quranic—and more mystic—images and language.
What can be truly said of the subject (of such inspired knowledge) is that his heart is ready to receive the irradiation of the Truth of Truths which is in all things. Nothing in effect can interpose itself between the heart and things … a kind of veil which puts itself between the mirror of the heart and the Well-Guarded tablet upon which is inscribed all that God had decreed until the Day of Resurrection. The truths of knowledge radiate from the mirror of the tablet onto the mirror of the heart, as an image produced on a mirror will imprint itself on another place in front of it.
The veil which is between the two mirrors is sometimes drawn aside by the hand, sometimes by the breaths of air that move it. Thus there blow at times the breaths of grace; the veils are then lifted from before the eyes of the heart and certain of the things inscribed on the Well-Guarded Tablet are reflected in him. That occurs from time to time in sleep and by this means one knows what will happen in the future. As for the complete removal of the veil, that will occur at the point of death when there will be removed that which conceals. But it also happens that the veil is drawn aside during the waking state to the extent of being lifted by a hidden grace of God Most High, and then something of the marvels of knowledge gleam in hearts from behind the veil of the Mystery. At times it is like a quick lightning flash; at other times a whole series of them, but limited, and it is extremely rare that this condition is much prolonged.
Just as it is only the mode of its acquisition that distinguishes the mystic’s grace-inspired knowledge from the scholar’s—whether he is one of the philosophers or one of the ulama class—sweat-equity knowledge, the same distinction prevails between inspiration, God’s gift to the saint, and revelation, God’s gift to the prophet.
Inspired knowledge differs from acquired knowledge neither by its nature nor its locus nor its cause but only with respect to the removal of the veil: that is not within the power of man. And revelation in turn does not differ from inspiration with respect to any of these but only by the vision of the angel who brings the knowledge, which comes into our hearts only through the agency of angels. God Most high alludes to it in His words “It is not given to man that God should speak to him, except by a revelation, or from behind a veil, or by sending an apostle in order that this latter, by God’s permission, reveals to man what God wishes” (Quran 42:50–51).
With these preliminaries out of the way, the mystics’ most influential and respected spokesman in Islam comes to the parting of the paths and follows the one that leads to his real subject, the Sufi way to God.
With this introduction, know that Sufis prefer the knowledge that comes by inspiration, to the exclusion of that acquired by study. Again, they desire neither to study such learning nor to learn anything of what authors have written on the subject: to inspect neither their teachings nor their arguments. They maintain on the contrary that the “way” consists in preferring spiritual combat, in getting rid of one’s faults, in breaking one’s ties and approaching God Most High through a single-minded spiritual effort. And every time those conditions are fulfilled, God for His part turns toward the heart of His servant and guarantees him an illumination by the lights of understanding.
Since God Most High has reserved to Himself the power of governing the heart, when the Mercy of God is extended upon this latter, light shines there, his breast expands, the secret of the Kingdom is revealed to him, the veil which blinded him disappears from before his face by the grace of the Mercy and the Truths shine out before him. The only thing in the power of the believer is that he prepare by the purification that strips him clean and that he arouse in himself a care for such things, as well as a sincere will, a consuming thirst and an attentive observation in the constant expectation of what God most High will reveal to him of His Mercy.
As for the prophets and the saints, this object was never revealed to them and the light was never expanded in their breasts either by dint of study or intellectual labors or by things written in books, but they arrived at it by renouncing the world to lead an ascetic life, by freeing themselves of their attachments, by emptying their hearts of their earthly occupations, and by approaching God Most High by a single-minded spiritual effort. And he who is God’s, God is his.
The Sufis say that the way that leads to such an end consists first of all in cutting off all one’s attachments to the world, to cease preoccupying oneself with family, wealth, children, one’s homeland, as well as with learning, with authority, with honor; and more, to bring the heart to a state where the existence or nonexistence of everything is a matter of indifference. Then the Sufi retires into his own company, into a cell, obliging himself to fulfill the obligatory religious precepts and obligations. He remains thus, his heart empty, concentrating on a single objective. He does not dissipate his thoughts either by reading the Quran or meditating on one of its commentaries, or on the books of Prophetic traditions or any other. He attempts to achieve just the opposite, that nothing should enter his spirit save God Most High.
When he is seated in solitude, he does not cease to say “God, God,” continuously and with a recollected heart. And he carries on until he comes to a state where he abandons the movement of his tongue and imagines the word [that is, the name of God] rolling off his tongue. Then he arrives at the point of obliterating any trace of the word from his tongue and he finds his heart continuously applied to (the exercise of) recollection. And he perseveres in it with determination until he reaches the point where he effaces the image of this word from his heart, the letters and the form of the word, and only the sense of the word remains in his heart, present within him, as if joined to him and never leaving him.
It is within his power to arrive at this point and to make this stage endure while resisting temptations. He cannot, however, draw upon himself the Mercy of God Most High. Rather, by his efforts he makes himself ready to receive the breaths of the divine Mercy and there remains nothing else for him to do but to await what God will reveal to him of His Mercy, as He revealed it, by this same way, to the prophets and the saints.
Then, if the will (of the Sufi) has been sincere, his spiritual effort a pure one, and his perseverance perfect; if he has not been carried in the opposite direction by his passions nor preoccupied by an unrest arising from his attachments to the world, then the rays of the Truth will shine in his heart. At the outset this will be like a sudden lightning that does not last, then returns, but slowly. If it does return, sometimes it remains and sometimes it is only passing. If it remains, sometimes its presence is extended and sometimes not. And at times illuminations like the first appear, one following the other; at other times they are reduced to a single experience. The saints “resting” in that state are without number, just as their natures and characters are innumerable.
In sum: this way leads solely, insofar as it concerns you, to a complete purity, purification and clarity, and then to being ready, expectant.
Finally Ghazali returns to the opening theme, the difference between the inspired knowledge of the Sufi and the discursive knowledge of the theologian.
As for those who practice speculation and discursive examination, they do not deny the existence of this way (of the Sufi), nor its possibility, nor that it can arrive at such an end on rare occasions: it is, after all, the state often achieved by the prophets and the saints. But they have looked upon it as an arduous way, slow to yield its fruits, requiring a complex of conditions rarely achieved. They have maintained that at this point it is almost impossible to break one’s attachments to the world and that to arrive at a “state” and remain there is more difficult still…. As a consequence of this kind of spiritual struggle (they say), the temperament is spoiled, the reason disordered and the body made ill. If the soul has not been exercised (by the practices of piety) and formed by the realities of the sciences to begin with, the heart is monopolized by corrupt imaginings in which the soul takes its rest over an extended period of time, to the point that one’s life is past and over without success having been achieved. How many Sufis who have followed this route have remained for twenty years in the grip of some imaginary fantasy, while someone who had previously been solidly grounded in learning would have immediately recognized the dubious quality of this product of the imagination. To devote oneself to following a course of study is the surest way of proceeding and accomplishing the end.
(The dialectical theologians) say that this attitude of the Sufis is like that of a man who neglects the study of the religious law by maintaining that the Prophet, may the peace and blessing of God be upon him, did not study but became expert in this discipline by revelation and inspiration, without studying texts or writing commentaries on them, and so will I, perhaps, by the practice of asceticism and sheer perseverance. Whoever thinks that way, they maintain, does ill to himself and is squandering his life. Indeed, he is like a man who leaves off trying to earn a living and cultivating the soil in the hope of chancing upon some buried treasure or other, something that is possible but highly improbable. (Ghazali, Revivification of the Sciences of Religion 3.16–17)
The chief Muslim agent of the turning of both philosophy and mysticism in the direction of theosophy was the philosopher Ibn Sina or Avicenna (d. 1038 C.E.). His contribution to the development and refinement of Islamic philosophy in its then current blend of Plato and Aristotle was enormous, but there are hints throughout his work that Avicenna had, behind and beyond his public and scholastic treatments of philosophical themes, a more esoteric “oriental philosophy” whose contents could only be hinted at. The obliqueness of Avicenna’s own allusions make its identification somewhat problematic, but a great many Muslims who came after him understood Avicenna’s esoteric philosophy as some form of mysticism, and identified its author as a Sufi.
Whether or not he was a Sufi in any formal sense, Avicenna laid heavy emphasis upon some form of divine illumination (ishraq) as the means whereby the philosopher received the knowledge that was the object of his quest. Avicenna’s “illumination” probably owed a great deal more to Neoplatonism than his many commentators and imitators were prepared to admit. It was, at any rate, an individual effort and an individual achievement, this pursuit of union with God, and there is nothing in Avicenna suggesting the classic Sufi theme of the passage of a spiritual baraka from master to novice, no charismatic “chain” upon which to mount on high.
One of Avicenna’s most influential interpreters read him somewhat differently, however. Suhrawardi (d. 1191 C.E.) took up and completed Avicenna’s “visionary recitals” and interpreted the philosopher’s “oriental philosophy” as a genuine renaissance of Eastern, that is, Persian wisdom. For those ancient sages the First Being was Xvarneh, “the light of glory” of Zoroastrianism, and that opened for Suhrawardi the opportunity of converting what had been for Avicenna and Ghazali an epistemological metaphor into a true metaphysic: existence and light are identical; the Necessary Being is Absolute Light.
Though the Sunni lawyer and theologian was probably a less congenial figure to him than the Shi‘ite philosopher, Suhrawardi learned as much from Ghazali as he did from Avicenna. Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.) had already anticipated, as we shall see, a new task for that perennial handmaiden, philosophy, and Suhrawardi developed it with enthusiasm. Speculative knowledge, the wisdom that comes from research and investigation, was simply a preparation for the “wisdom that savors,” the experimental knowledge of God. Philosophy thus received its justification and at the same time was assigned an appropriate place as a preparation for the final stages of the search for the Absolute. Suhrawardi likewise followed Ghazali in his elaboration of the rich possibilities of allegorical exegesis in the service of mysticism.
Suhrawardi’s work, with its assertion of Persia’s place in the history of Wisdom, its attractive metaphysic of light, its developed theory of allegorical exegesis, and its valorization of experience over theoretical knowledge, provided a program for both the philosophers and the mystics of Iran, and a convenient bridge upon which they might thereafter meet. That the meetings were frequent and rewarding is attested by the twin traditions of mystical poetry in Persian and the ill-charted but impressive course of theosophical and philosophical speculation during the reign of the Safavids in Iran.
A distinction has been drawn between the “Mysticism of Infinity” and the “Mysticism of Personality,” and it has been argued that later Sufism is unmistakably in the former category, which acknowledges God as the Ultimate and Unique Reality whereas the world possesses only the “limited reality” of a distant emanation from the One Being. In the latter view all Reality is in fact One. This position was not very congenial to Muslim revelation, which stresses the gulf between the Creator and His creation, and which preached, in its mystical mode, an approach to God through moral activity and not identity with Him. Union or identity (ittihad) with God was already a troublesome Sufi concept for the traditionists, but even more scandalous was the message broadcast by the influential philosopher and poet Ibn Arabi (d. 1204 C.E.), that of the “unity of Being.”
The Muslim scholastics’ reverence for Ghazali and Ghazali’s own moderating influence may have prevented a full-scale reaction to the rationalist strain in theology. But there are responses other than reaction, and the more radical mystical thinkers in Islam, more radical than al-Ghazali at any rate, illustrate another view of rationalism. For example, Ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240 C.E.) speaks from a supremely confident position—the text of his book The Bezels of Wisdom, he informs the reader at the outset, was handed to him by none other than Muhammad himself in Damascus in the month of Muharram, 1230 C.E. Ibn al-Arabi simply dismisses the rationalizing and rationalist ways of trying to understand God as at worst ignorant and at best irrelevant. He tells this highly revealing anecdote about a meeting in Cordova between himself, the still very young patron saint of Islamic theosophy, and Ibn Rushd, the “second Aristotle” of Islam, in his Meccan Revelations.
I spent a good day in Cordova at the house of Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd. He had expressed a desire to meet with me in person, since he had heard of certain revelations I had received while in retreat, and had shown considerable astonishment concerning them. In consequence, my father, who was one of his close friends, took me with him on the pretext of business, in order to give Ibn Rushd the opportunity of making my acquaintance. I was at the time a beardless youth.
As I entered the house the philosopher rose to greet me with all the signs of friendliness and affection, and embraced me. Then he said to me, “Yes!” and showed pleasure on seeing that I had understood him. I, on the other hand, when I became aware of the motive of his pleasure, replied “No!” At this Ibn Rushd drew back from me, his color changed and he seemed to doubt what he had thought of me. He then put to me the following question: “What solution have you found as a result of mystical illumination and divine inspiration?” I replied, “Yes and No. Between the Yea and the Nay the spirits take their flight beyond matter, and the necks detach themselves from their bodies.” At this Ibn Rushd became pale, and I saw him tremble as he muttered the formula “There is no power save from God.” This was because he had understood my allusion. (Ibn al-Arabi, Meccan Revelations 1.153) [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 2]
We are somewhat less certain than Ibn Rushd about the meaning of the allusion, but there is no mistaking Ibn al-Arabi’s views on what and how we know about God—or better, the Reality. He begins with an attack on the very foundation of the rationalist enterprise, the principle of causality.
An indication of the weakness of intellectual speculation is the notion that a cause cannot be (also) the effect of that to which it is a cause. Such is the judgment of the intellect, while in the science of divine Self-revelation it is known that a cause may be the effect of that for which it is a cause…. The most that the intellectual will admit to on this matter, when he sees that it contradicts speculative evidence, is that the essence, after it is established that it is one among many causes, in some form or other, of a (given) effect, cannot be an effect to its effect, so that that effect should become its cause, while the first still remains a cause, but that if its determination becomes changed by its transformation in forms, then it may thus become an effect to its own effect, which might then become its cause. This then is as far as he will go, when he perceives that the matter does not agree with his rational speculation.
There have been none more intelligent than the Messengers, God’s blessing be on them, and what they brought us derives from the divine Majesty. They indeed confirmed what the intellect confirms, but added more that the intellect is not capable of grasping, things the intellect declares to be absurd, except in the case of one who has had an immediate experience of divine manifestation; afterwards, left to himself, he is confused as to what he has seen. If he is a servant of the Lord, he refers his intelligence to Him (to respond to his perplexities), but if he is a servant of reason, he reduces God to its yardstick. This happens only so long as he is in this worldly state, being veiled from his otherworldly state in this world. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, “Elias”) [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 234]
The “servant of the Lord” and the “servant of reason” are thus neatly distinguished. Other similar distinctions, all to the same point, appear often in his work.
For the believers and men of spiritual vision it is the creation that is surmised and the Reality that is seen and perceived, while in the case of those not in these two categories, it is the Reality Who is surmised and the creation that is seen and perceived by the senses….
Men are divided into two groups. The first travel a way they know and whose destination they know, which is their Straight Path (Quran 11:56). The second group travel a way they do not know and of whose destination they are unaware, which is equally the Straight Path. The gnostic calls on God with spiritual perception, while he who is not a gnostic calls on Him in ignorance and bound by a tradition.
Such a knowledge is a special one stemming from “the lowest of the low” (Quran 95:5), since the feet are the lowest part of the person, what is lower than that being the way beneath them. He who knows that the Reality is the way knows the truth, for it is none other than He that you progress and travel, since there is naught to be known save Him, since He is Being Itself and therefore also the traveller himself. Further, there is no Knower save Him; so who are you? Therefore, know your true reality and your way, for the truth has been made known to you on the tongue of the Interpreter [that is, Muhammad], if you will only understand. He is a true word that none understands, save that his understanding be true; the Reality has many relations and many aspects….
… You may say of Being what you will; either that it is the creation or that it is the Reality, or that it is at once both the creation and the Reality. It might also be said that there is neither creation nor the Reality, as one might admit to perplexity in the matter, since by assigning degrees the difficulties appear. But for the limitation (that arises in defining the Reality), the Messengers would not have taught that the Reality transforms Himself in cosmic forms nor would they have described Him (at the same time) as abstracting Himself from all forms….
Because of this (inevitable limitation by definition), He is both denied and known, called incomparable and compared. He who sees the Reality from His standpoint, in Him and by Him, is a gnostic. He who sees the Reality from His standpoint, in Him, but with himself as the seer, is not a gnostic. He who does not see the Reality in this way, but expects to see Him by himself, he is ignorant.
In general most men have perforce an individual concept of their Lord, which they ascribe to Him and in which they seek Him. So long as the Reality is presented to them according to it, they recognize Him and affirm Him, whereas if it is presented in any other form, they deny Him, flee from Him and treat Him improperly, while at the same time imagining that they are acting toward Him fittingly. One who believes (in the ordinary way) believes only in a deity he has created in himself, since a deity in “beliefs” is a (mental) construction. They see (in this deity) only themselves and their own constructions within themselves. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, “Hud”) [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 132–133]
Sufism took eagerly to Ibn Arabi’s version of a pantheistic universe and its supporting apparatus of Gnostic esoterics. Such traditionists as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 C.E.) were equally quick to discover the dangers of the Sufi metaphysic and its freewheeling exegesis to what had by then been shaped into a consensual version of Sunni Islam. But the Sufis were by no means the only proponents of Gnosticism in the Islamic lands. There are Gnostic premises at the base of most of the occult sciences that flourished in the ancient and medieval world—alchemy for one—and the ease with which so many of them passed from one to another of the very different religious climates of ancient Greco-Roman paganism, Near Eastern Islam, and both Eastern and Western Christianity and Judaism underscores both the appeal and the adaptability of Gnosticism. And in Islam Gnosticism demonstrated that it could adapt itself as readily to political as to scientific ends.
The Isma‘ilis were a subdivision of the Shi‘ite movement who, unlike the main body of the Shi‘a in the Middle Ages, had a political program for overthrowing the Sunni Caliph and replacing him with a revolutionary Mahdi-Imam (see below). They were not successful, but they had access to and put to effective use the entire Gnostic apparatus of cosmic history, in which the Shi‘ite Imams became the Gnostic Aeons: a secret revelation of the “realities” that lay hidden in the concealed (batin) rather than the evident sense of Scripture; an imamic guide who possessed an infallible and authoritative magisterium (ta‘lim); and an initiated elite that formed, in the Isma‘ili case, the core of an elaborate political underground. At their headquarters in Cairo, a city that the Isma‘ili Fatimids founded in 969 C.E., agents were instructed in the Isma‘ili gnosis and program, and were sent forth with the “call” of the Mahdi-Imam to cells and cadres that had been set up in the caliphal lands in Iraq and Iran.
Sunni and Isma‘ili Islam shared a common foundation of reliance on authority and tradition. For the Sunni, that tradition was embodied in the elaborate structure of Muslim law which in turn rested upon hadith reports that went back to the Prophet’s own words and deeds, and so constituted a second revelation with an authority equal to the Quran’s own. The Quran and the “sunna of the Prophet” prescribed a certain order in the religious sphere. However, that order was impossible to achieve without the establishment of a parallel political order that could guarantee the performance of religious duties by securing for each believer the security of his life and property, and was capable at the same time of maintaining the unity of the community in the face of civil disorders. From this was derived the political authority of the Caliph and his delegates.
For the Isma‘ilis, the Imam was not a political corollary of a religious system but an integral part of the religious system itself. In a famous Shi‘ite hadith, already described in chapter 3 above, the Prophet Muhammad, upon his return from his “ascension” to the highest heavens where the truths of creation were revealed to him, cast his mantle over his daughter Fatima and his grandsons Hasan and Husayn and so signified the transmission of those same truths to his Fatimid-Alid descendants. Thus it was the Imam and he alone who held, at least in theory—every Sufi and philosopher from the twelfth century onward claimed the same privilege—the key to ta’wil, the allegorical exegesis of Scripture that penetrated the surface meaning to the Truths beneath.
The intellectual defense of Sunnism against this claim was undertaken by al-Ghazali in a series of tracts that mounted a frontal attack on what he called “the Partisans of the Concealed” (al-batiniyya).” But the issue appears in all its complexity in a more personal statement, his Deliverer from Error, which describes his own investigation of the competing claims upon the faith of the Muslim. Faith tied to simple acceptance on the authority of others was insufficient for Ghazali; it could be shaken by the conflicting claims put forward by different parties and sects within Islam and by the equally strong adherence to their own faith by the Christians and Jews. Unless he was prepared to lapse into an agnostic skepticism, as Ghazali was not, there had to be some other way for the seeker after truth. Four possibilities presented themselves: the way of speculative theology, kalam, which professed to support its religious beliefs with rational argument; the way of the philosophers, who laid claim to true scientific demonstration; the Isma‘ili way, which promised religious certitude by reliance upon the teaching of an infallible Imam; and finally the way of the Sufis or mystics, who offered intuitive understanding and a certitude born of standing in the presence of God.
The attraction of ta‘lim was undeniable, and Ghazali could reply that if such were the answer, then it was far preferable to accept the infallible teaching of the Prophet than of some derivative Imam, whose teachings in any event turned out to be a debased form of Greek philosophy. But neither can really cure the malady: it is part of the human condition to doubt and to disagree, and on the rational level the only solution is not to throw oneself on the authority of another but to work out an answer with patience and intelligence, an answer based equally on the Quran and the principles of right reason. The solution is, in short, Ghazali’s own rigorous version of dialectical theology.
All religions agree on the fact that souls experience states of happiness and misery after death, but they disagree in the manner of symbolizing these states and explaining their existence to men. (Ibn Rushd, Unveiling of the Programs of Proof 122) [AVERROES 1961: 76]
So Ibn Rushd at the beginning of a chapter on the “Future Life.” His mood in writing it was more defensive, perhaps, than philosophical, as we shall see, but he knew whereof he spoke. Again, referring to the future life, Ibn Rushd remarks that this was not a question that confronted the “ancients.”
This is a problem which is not found in the older philosophers, although resurrection has been mentioned in different religions for at least a thousand years, and the philosophers whose theories have come to us are of more recent date. The first to mention bodily resurrection were the prophets of Israel after Moses, as is evident from the Psalms and many books attributed to the Israelites. Bodily resurrection is also affirmed in the New Testament and attributed by tradition to Jesus. (Ibn Rushd, Incoherence of the Incoherence 580) [AVERROES 1954: 359]
And, the Muslim Ibn Rushd had no need of adding, resurrection sounds like a trumpet throughout the Quran.
As we have already seen in chapter 1 above, the Muslim view was that Jesus did not die on the cross, as the Christians alleged, but had been taken up alive by God to heaven. He would, then, have to return to earth and suffer the death that is the common fate of all mankind. But his return had for the Muslims as much eschatological significance as it did for the Christians, and it was closely connected with the events of the End Time, as appears in this summary statement of Muslim messianism by Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406 C.E.).
It has been well known by all Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time a man from the family of the Prophet will without fail make his appearance, one who will strengthen the religion and make justice triumph. The Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdi [that is, the “Guided One”]. Following him, the Antichrist will appear, together with all the subsequent signs of the Hour (of the Last Judgment), as established in the sound tradition. After the Mahdi Jesus will descend and kill the Antichrist. Or, Jesus will descend with the Mahdi, and help him kill the Antichrist, and have him as the leader in his prayers. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 3.51) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:156]
The matter did not rest there, of course; the Muslim tradition had filled in many of the details regarding Jesus’ return.
Abu Salih Shu‘ayb ibn Muhammad al-Bayhaqi has informed us with a chain of authorities back to Abu Hurayra how this latter related that the Messenger of God, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace, said: “The Prophets are brethren, though of different mothers, and their religion is one and the same. I am the nearest of mankind to Jesus son of Mary, on both of whom be peace, because there has been no Prophet between him and me. It will come to pass that the son of Mary will descend among you as a just ruler. He will descend to my community and be my deputy (or Caliph) over them, so when you see him, give him recognition. He will be a man symmetrical in stature, of reddish-white (complexion), lank-haired, as though his hair were dripping perfume though it had not been moistened. He will come down in a greenish-yellow garment, will break crosses and kill swine, will put an end to the poll-tax (paid by non-Muslims under Islam), will raise the welcoming cry from al-Rawha when he comes for the Greater and the Lesser Pilgrimage, undertaking them both with zeal. He will make war on behalf of Islam, until in his time he destroys all religions save that of Islam, and there will thenceforward be but one single prostration of obeisance, namely that to God, Lord of the Worlds. Also in his time God will destroy the Antichrist, the lying al-Dajjal. Then there will be such security on earth that lions will pasture freely with camels, tigers with cattle, wolves with sheep, children will play with serpents and no one will do harm to anyone. Then he will die, and the Muslims will pray over him and bury him at Medina beside the grave of Umar. Read, if you will, the words ‘There are none of the People of the Book but will believe in him before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them.’(Quran 4:159).” (Tha‘alibi, Stories of the Prophets) [JEFFERY 1962: 596–597]
Additional specifics are given in a series of traditions cited by Ibn Khaldun.
The final descent of Jesus will be at the time of the afternoon prayer, when three-fourths of the Muslim day have passed…. It has been stated in the tradition that Jesus will descend at the white minaret east of Damascus. He will descend between two yellowish colored ones, that is, two light saffron-yellow colored garments. He will place his hands upon the wings of two angels. His hair is as long as though he had just been released from a dungeon. When he lowers his head, it rains, and when he lifts it up, jewels resembling pearls pour down from him. He has many moles on his face. Another tradition has: “Square built and reddish white.” Still another has: “He will marry in the gharb,” gharb meaning a bucket as used by the Bedouins. Thus the meaning is that he will take a woman from among the Bedouins as his wife. She will bear his children. The tradition also mentions that Jesus will die after forty years. It is also said that Jesus will die in Medina and be buried at the side of Umar ibn al-Khattab. And it is said that Abu Bakr and Umar [that is, the first two Caliphs of the Muslim community] will rise from the dead between two Prophets (Muhammad and Jesus). (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 3.51) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:193–194]
The Muslims’ expectation of the End Time included the return of Jesus. What is new in the Islamic tradition is that he will come in the company of, or following upon, another messianic figure, the Mahdi or “Guided One.” There were in circulation a great many Prophetic traditions on the subject, the chief of which are reported and analyzed by Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406 C.E.) in his Prolegomenon to History. Typical of the simplest and most direct of them are the two following, which occur in canonical collections of the traditions of the Prophet by al-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud (see chapter 4 above), and are reported here by Ibn Khaldun.
With their chain of transmitters going back to Ibn Mas‘ud, al-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud have published the following tradition … on the authority of the Prophet: “If no more than one day remained of the world … God would cause the day to last until there be sent a man from me—or: from my family—whose name will tally with my name, and the name of whose father will tally with the name of my father.” … The version of al-Tirmidhi has: “The world will not be destroyed until the Arabs are ruled by a man from my family, whose name will tally with my name.” … Al-Tirmidhi states in connection with both versions that it is a good and sound tradition. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 3.51) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:159–160]
Muhammad could not serve as his own Messiah; he was a mortal man and he was dead. The Islamic focus on the Messiah as restorer came to rest, then, on one of the Prophet’s family. The Messiah will be, the traditions begin to insist, a descendant of one of the offspring of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima. This was a tribute not so much to Fatima as it was to her husband Ali, the cousin of the Prophet and the figure about whom the major schism in Islam, that between Sunnis and Shi‘ites (see chapter 5 above), had developed.
Abu Dawud published a tradition relating to Ali in his chapter on the Mahdi, … on the authority of Abu al-Tufayl, on the authority of Ali, on the authority of the Prophet, who said: “If only one day in the whole duration of the world remained, God would send a man of my family who would fill the world with justice, as it has been filled with injustice.” With a chain of transmitters going back to Ali, Abu Dawud also published the following tradition … on the authority of Abu Ishaq al-Sabi‘i, who said that Ali, looking at his son al-Hasan, said, “This son of mine is a lord, as he was called by (his grandfather) the Messenger of God. From his spine there will come forth a man who will be called by the name of your prophet and who will resemble him physically, but will not resemble him in character.” …
The following tradition, furthermore, was published by Abu Dawud, as well as by Ibn Maja and al-Hakim through Ali ibn Nufayl … on the authority of Umm Salima, who said: I heard the Messenger of God say: “The Mahdi is one of my family, one of the descendants of Fatima.” This is Abu Dawud’s version. He did not make any critical remarks concerning it. Ibn Maja’s version has: “The Mahdi is one of Fatima’s descendants” Al-Hakim’s version has: “I heard the Messenger of God mention the Mahdi. He said, ‘Yes, he is a fact, and he will be one of the children of Fatima.’ …” (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 3.51) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:162–165]
As we have already seen in chapter 3 above, Shi‘ite speculation about the return of the Mahdi centered more and more on the return of their “concealed” Imam, but Sunni and Shi‘ite alike devoted considerable time and energy to what Ibn Khaldun obviously considered a useless pursuit.
There are many similar such statements. The time, the man and the place (of the Mahdi’s return) are clearly indicated in them. But the time passes, and there is no slightest trace (of the prediction coming true). Then some new suggestion is adopted which, as one can see, is based upon linguistic equivocations, imaginary ideas, and astrological judgments. The life of every one of those people is spent on such things. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 3.51) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 2:195]
The very foundations of Islam are cast on eschatology, and though the Quran shows little interest in the signs, political or other, of the approach of the end, its earliest suras ring incessantly with the certainty of the Judgment and threats and promises of the future life.
Has news of the Overpowering Event reached you?
Many faces will be contrite on that day,
Laboring, wearied out,
Given water from the boiling spring to drink.
They will have no food except bitter thorn,
Neither nourishing nor banishing hunger.
Well-pleased with their endeavor,
In the high empyrean,
Never hearing idle talk.
There is a stream of running water in it;
And within it are couches placed on high,
Goblets set,
Cushions arranged,
And rich carpets spread.
(Quran 88:1–16)
Surely for those who persecute believers, men and women, and do not repent afterwards, is the punishment of Hell, and the punishment of burning.
Surely for those who believe and do the right are gardens with rivers running by. That is the greatest success. (Quran 85:10–11)
Ah, the woe that day for those who deny,
Who call the Day of Judgment a lie!
None denies it but the sinful transgressors.
When Our revelations are recited before him, he says: “These are fables of long ago.”
No. In fact what they have been doing has rusted their hearts.
Therefore they will be screened off from their Lord that day,
Then they will indeed burn in Hell.
They will then be told:
“This is what you had denied.” …
Verily the pious will be in heaven,
On couches face to face.
On their faces you will see the glow of beatitude.
They will be served the choicest wine, sealed
With a sealing of musk.
(Quran 83:10–26)
Surely a time is fixed for the Day of Judgment.
The day the trumpet blast is sounded you will come in hordes;
The heavens will be opened wide and turn into so many doors.
The mountains put into motion turning into mirage.
Certainly Hell lies in wait,
The rebels’ abode,
Where they will remain for aeons,
Finding neither sleep nor anything to drink there
Except boiling water and benumbing cold:
A fitting reward.
They were those who did not expect a reckoning,
And rejected our signs as lies.
We have kept an account of everything in a book.
So taste, for We shall add nothing but torment.
As for those who preserve themselves from evil and follow the straight path, there is achievement for them:
Orchards and vineyards,
And graceful maidens ever of the same age,
And flasks full and flowing.
They will hear no blasphemies there or disavowals:
A recompense from your Lord, a sufficient gift.
(Quran 78:17–36)
The whole of Sura 82 is in fact an early Muslim résumé of the Last Things.
THE CLEAVING
In the name of God, most benevolent, ever-merciful.
When the sky is split asunder.
When the stars dispersed,
When the oceans begin to flow,
When the graves are overturned,
Each soul will know what it had sent ahead and what it had left behind.
O man, what seduced you from your munificent Lord,
Who created you, then formed your symmetry, then gave you the right proportion,
Shaping you into any form He pleased?
Even then you deny the Judgment.
Surely there are guardians over you,
Illustrious scribes
The pious will surely be in heaven,
The wicked certainly in Hell:
They will burn in it on the Day of Judgment,
And will not be removed from it.
How can you comprehend what the Day of Judgment is?
How then can you comprehend what the Day of Judgment is?
It is the day when no soul will have the power to do the least for a soul, and God’s will alone will be done.
(Quran 82:1–19 [complete])
Yet, as Jesus himself had warned, no man knows the day or the hour.
They ask you about the Hour: When is its predetermined time? Say: “Only my Lord has the knowledge. No one can reveal it except Him. Oppressive for the heavens and the earth will it be. When it comes, it will come unawares.” They ask you about it as if you knew. You tell them: “Only God has the knowledge.” (Quran 7:187)
But there will be signs of its immediate approach. Those cited in Sura 82 were chiefly cosmological, but elsewhere in the Quran (e.g., 22:2) they are social as well. The graves will be emptied of the dead. There will be a judgment: every man’s deeds have been recorded by angels, and each individual will be confronted with his own account. The righteous will henceforth lead a life of pleasure in what is elsewhere called “the Garden” or “the Garden of Eden”; the evildoers are condemned to a fiery Gehenna. God alone will be the judge.
When the single blast is sounded on the trumpet,
And the earth and the mountains heaved and crushed to powder with one leveling blow,
On that Day will come what is to come.
The sky will cleave asunder on that day and fall to pieces.
On its fringes will be angels, eight of them, bearing their Lord’s throne aloft.
You will then be set before Him, and no one of you will remain unexposed.
He who is given his ledger in his right hand, will say:
“Here, read my ledger.
I was certain I’ll be given my account.”
So he shall have an agreeable life
With fruits hanging low within reach;
“Eat and drink to your fill as a reward for deeds you have done in days of yore.”
But whoever gets his ledger in his left hand, will say:
“Would that I were never given my ledger,
And not known my account!
I wish death had put an end to me.
Of no use was even my wealth.
Vanished has my power from me.”
Seize him and manacle him,
Then cast him to be burnt into Hell;
And string him to a chain seventy cubits long.
He did not believe in God the supreme,
Nor urged others to feed the poor.
And that is why he has no friend today,
Nor food other than suppuration
Which none but the hellish eat.
(Quran 69:13–37)
And from the sura called “The Inevitable”:
When what is to happen comes to pass—
Which is bound to happen undoubtedly—
Degrading some and exalting others;
When the earth is shaken up convulsively,
The mountains bruised and crushed,
Turned to dust, floating in the air,
You will become three kinds:
Those of the right hand—how happy those of the right hand!
Then those of the left hand—how unhappy those of the left hand!
Then those who go before, how pre-excellent,
Who will be honored
In gardens of tranquility;
Anumber of the earlier peoples,
But a few of later times,
On couches wrought of gold,
Reclining face to face.
Youths of never-ending bloom will pass round to them
Cups and decanters, beakers full of sparkling wine,
Unheady, unebriating;
And such fruits as they fancy
Bird meats that they relish,
And companions with big beautiful eyes
Like pearls within their shells,
As recompense for all they have done.
They will hear no nonsense there or talk of sin,
Other than “peace, peace,” the salutation.
As for those on the right hand—how happy those on the right hand—
They will be in the shade of the thornless lote-tree
And acacia covered with heaps of bloom,
Lengthened shadows,
Gushing water,
And fruits numberless,
Unending, unforbidden,
And maidens incomparable.
We have formed them in a distinctive fashion,
And made them virginal,
Loving companions matched in age,
For those of the right hand,
Acrowd of earlier generations
And a crowd of the later.
But those of the left hand—how unhappy those of the left hand—
Will be in the scorching wind and boiling water,
Under the shadow of thick black smoke
Neither cool nor agreeable.
They were endowed with good things
But persisted in that greater sin,
And said “What! When we are dead and turned to dust and bones, shall we be raised again?
And so will our fathers?”
Say: “Indeed, the earlier and the later generations
Will be gathered together on a certain day which is predetermined.
Then you, the erring and the denyers,
Will eat of the tree of Zaqqum,
And drink over it scalding water,
Lapping it up like female camels raging of thirst with disease.”
Such will be their welcome on the Day of Judgment….
If he is one of the honored,
There will be peace and plenty, and gardens of tranquility for him.
And if he is one of those of the right hand,
There will be the salutation by those of the right hand: “Peace be upon you.”
But if he is of the denyers and the errants,
The welcome will be boiling water
And the roasting in Hell.
This is indeed the ultimate truth.
Then praise your Lord, the most supreme.
(Quran 56:1–95)
There is more than one problem of interpretation here. The first has to do with the identity of the “three kinds” of men who will face judgment. They seem to correspond to those who stand on the right and on the left and “those who go before,” but they do not appear to match three distinct types of punishment or reward. Zamakhshari (1134 C.E.) attempts to explain.
… Those on the right side … left side … : It may be a question of those of high rank and those of low rank…. The right side constitutes a good sign and the left side constitutes a bad sign…. Others say that those on the right and those on the left are those who experience happiness and unhappiness: the blessed are happy with themselves because of their obedience, while the damned are unhappy with themselves because of their disobedience. Still others say that the inhabitants of Paradise come to stand on the right and those of hell fire on the left.
Those who go before (are) those with pious hearts who arrived there first, for God summoned them and they were not surpassed in striving as God’s pleasure indicated. There are some who say that there are three classes of men: (1) the one who enters into the good early in his life and perseveres in it until he leaves this world. This is the one who “goes before” and stands near God. (2) Then there is the man who enters into sin early in his life and is remiss for a long time, but then turns in repentance toward God. This is the one on the right side. (3) Finally, there is the man who enters into evil early in life and who is thereafter incapable of refraining from it until his death. This is the one on the left side. (Zamakhshari ad loc.)
The second problem has to do with the two apparently contradictory verses: “A number of the earlier peoples, / But a few of later times” (13–14) and “A crowd of earlier generations / And a crowd of the later” (40). Zamakhshari’s commentary continues:
The word “number” designates a numerous community…. What is meant is: “those who go before” are numerous among the former generations. These are the communities from Adam’s day to Muhammad. “But a few of later times” refers to the community of Muhammad. Others say that the former and later times refer to the older and younger members of the (Muslim) community.
This latter interpretation would seem to refer respectively to the Meccan and then the Medinese converts to Islam. That reading would lead naturally to the interpretation of verse 40 cited disapprovingly by Zamakhshari.
It is related that the Muslims were severely persecuted when this verse “but a few of later times” (verse 14) was revealed, and that for this reason the Messenger of God once again took counsel with his Lord until there was revealed (the later verse): “and a crowd of the later.” To this I answer: This is not likely for two reasons. In the first place, the verse under discussion (verse 14) refers clearly to “those who go before,” while the second verse (verse 40) refers to “those on the right side” … and second, because abrogation (of one verse by another) is possible (in the case of commands), but not in the case of simple information.
The following represents a somewhat more schematic, and considerably clearer view of the afterlife as the place where God’s justice will be fulfilled.
For those who fulfill their covenant with God and do not break their agreement,
Who keep together what God has ordained held together, and fear their Lord and dread the hardship of the Reckoning,
Who persevere in seeking the way of their Lord, who fulfill their devotional obligations, and spend of what We have given them, secretly and openly, who repel evil with good: For them is the recompense of Paradise:
Perpetual gardens which they will enter with those of their fathers, wives and children who are virtuous and at peace….
As for those who break God’s covenant after validating it, and sever relations which God enjoined cohered, and spread corruption in the land, there is condemnation for them and an evil abode.
God increases or decreases the fortunes of whosoever He will, and they rejoice in the life of this world. Yet the life of this world is nothing but a trifle as compared to the life of the next. (Quran 13:20–26)
In the passage just cited, the moral quality of the afterlife is stressed; there is no lack of passages, however, where the emphasis is on the physical details of both the punishments of the sinner and the rewards of the just. In the translation of this next graphic sura the refrain verse, “How many favors of your Lord will you then deny?” which is repeated after every verse, has been omitted after the first occurrence.
O society of demons and men, cross the bounds of heaven and the earth if you have the ability, then pass beyond them; but you cannot unless you acquire the law.
How many favors of your Lord will you then deny?
Let loose at you will be smokeless flames of fire so that you will not be able to defend yourselves.
When the sky will split asunder, and turn rosy like the dregs of anointing oil.
Neither men nor demons will be questioned on that day about his sin.
The sinners will be recognized by their marks and seized by the forelock and their feet.
This is Hell the sinners called a lie.
They will go round and round between it and boiling water.
But for him who has lived in awe of the sublimity of his Lord, there will be two gardens,
Full of overhanging branches,
With two springs of water flowing through them both.
In both of them will be every kind of fruit in pairs.
Reclining on carpets lined with brocade, fruits of the garden hanging low within reach.
In them maidens with averted glances, undeflowered by men or demons before them,
As though rubies and pearls.
Should the reward of goodness be anything but goodness?
And beside these are two other gardens,
Of darkest verdant green,
With two fountains gushing constantly,
With fruits in them,
And dates and pomegranates.
In them good and comely maidens,
Houris cloistered in pavilions,
Undeflowered by men or demons before them.
Reclining on green cushions and rich carpets excellent.
Blessed by your Lord, full of majesty and beneficence.
(Quran 55:33–76)
The tree of Zaqqum will indeed be the food of sinners.
It is like pitch. It will fume in the belly
As does boiling water.
“Seize him and drag him into the depths of Hell,” (it will be said).
“Then pour over his head the torment of scalding water.”
“Taste it, you were indeed the mighty and the noble!
This is certainly what you had denied.”
Surely those who fear and follow the straight path will be in a place of peace and security
In the midst of gardens and of springs,
Dressed in brocade and shot silk, facing one another.
Just like that. We shall pair them with companions with large black eyes.
They will call for every kind of fruit with satisfaction.
There they will not know any death apart from the first death they had died.
(Quran 44:43–56)
These extended selections from the Quran reveal at once a highly developed and central view of the Last Things: the Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell all have a vivid—if sometimes highly allusive—reality. The details were filled in, as they were in Judaism and Christianity, by popular preaching and the collections of Prophetic traditions, while the dogmatic issues began to emerge from the workshops of the theologians in the eighth and ninth centuries. We join that latter tradition in the mid-ninth century in a series of statements of what then passed as Islamic orthodoxy, collectively called The Testament of Abu Hanifa. The eschatological articles, buttressed with appropriate Quranic support, begin with Article 17.
Article 17: We confess that God ordered the pen to write. Then the pen said, “What shall I write, my Lord?” God said: “Write what shall happen every day till the Resurrection,” as He says: “Everything that they do is in the books kept by the guardian angel; every action, whether small or great, is written down” (Quran 54:52V.).
Article 18: We confess that the punishment in the tomb shall without fail take place.
Article 19: We confess that, in view of the Traditions on the subject, the interrogation by Munkar and Nakir is a reality.
Article 20: We confess that Paradise and Hell are a reality and that they are created and existing at present, that neither they nor their inhabitants shall vanish, since the Scripture says regarding the Faithful: “It [that is, Paradise] is prepared for the God-fearing” (Quran 3:127), and regarding the infidels: “It [that is, Hell] is prepared for the infidels” (Quran 2:22, 3:126). They were created with a view to reward and punishment respectively.
Article 21: We confess that the balance is a reality, since Scripture says: “And we will appoint balances for the Day of Resurrection” (Quran 21:48).
Article 22: We confess that the reading of the book on the Day of Resurrection is a reality, since the Scripture says: “Read your book, there is needed none but yourself to make out an account against you this day” (Quran 17:15).
Article 23: We confess that God will restore to life those souls after death, and cause them to rise, on a day of which the duration will be fifty thousand years, for retribution and reward and paying of duties, as Scripture says, “In truth God will wake up to life those who are in the tombs” (Quran 22:7).
Article 24: We confess that the meeting of God with the inhabitants of Paradise will be a reality, without description, comparison or modality.
Article 25: The intercession of our Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace, is a reality for all those who belong to the inhabitants of Paradise, even though they should be guilty of mortal sins….
Article 27: We confess that the inhabitants of Paradise will dwell there forever, and that the inhabitants of Hell will dwell there forever, as the Scripture says regarding the Faithful: “They are the companions of Paradise, they shall dwell there forever” (Quran 2:76), and regarding the infidels: “They are the companions of the fire, they shall dwell there forever” (Quran 2:75, 214). (Testament of Abu Hanifa) [WENSINCK 1932: 129–131]
Each of these articles has its own background and history. Articles 18 and 19, for example, offered without Quranic support but with a generic reference to the Prophetic traditions, look like this in one of the traditions, this one highly wrought into a careful narrative, assembled by Abu’ l-Layth al-Samarqandi (d. 983 C.E.). It is reported with a full chain of authorities reaching back to al-Bara ibn Azib.
[Muhammad said, on the occasion of the funeral of one of his Medinese followers:] When a man who is a true believer is drawing near to the next world and is about to be cut off from this world, there descend to him angels whose faces are as white as the sun, bringing with them a shroud from Paradise and celestial aromatics, and take their seat just within his vision. Then the Angel of Death arrives, takes a seat at his head and says: “O you tranquil soul, come forth to God’s favor and God’s forgiveness.” Then, said the Prophet, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace, it [that is, the soul of the believer] comes forth, flowing as easily as a drop from a waterskin, whereupon those angels take it, not leaving it in his hand more than the twinkling of an eye before they take it, wrap it in the aforementioned shroud and aromatics so that the odor from it is more redolent than the finest musk to be found on the face of the earth, and mount up with it…. At last they come to the gate of the lowest heaven and ask that it be opened for it. It is opened to them and the chief personages in each heaven receive it and accompany it to that which lies beyond it, till at last they arrive with it at the seventh heaven. There God, exalted be He, says: “Write its record in Illiyun (Quran 83:18–21) and return it to the earth from which I created men, into which I make them return, and out of which I will bring them a second time” (Quran 20:55). The spirit is then returned to its body, whereupon two angels [that is, Munkar and Nakir, unmentioned in the Quran] come to it and ask: “Who is your Lord?” It replies: “God is my Lord.” They ask: “What is your religion?” “Islam is my religion,” it replies. Then they say: “And what say you about this man who was sent among you?” and it answers: “He is the Apostle of God, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace.” They ask: “What works have you?” and it answers: “I have read God’s Book, believed it and in it put my trust.” Then a herald will call: “He has believed My servant [that is, Muhammad]. Spread for him a bed from the Garden, clothe him in a celestial garment, open for him a door giving onto the Garden through which may come to him its breezes and its aroma and expand his grave for him as far as the eye can reach….”
But when an unbeliever is drawing near to the next world and being cut off from this world, there descend to him from heaven angels whose faces are black, bringing with them hair-cloth, and take their seats just within his vision. Then the Angel of Death arrives, takes his seat at his head and says: “O you pernicious soul, come forth to God’s discontent and wrath.” Thereupon his soul is scattered all through his members and the angel drags it forth like the dragging of an iron spit through moist wool, tearing the veins and sinews. Thus he takes it, but it is not in his hand more than the twinkling of an eye before those angels take it, put it in the hair-cloth where the odor from it is like the stench of a decomposing carcass. They mount up with it … and at last they come with it to the gate of the lowest heaven, and ask that it be opened for it, but it is not opened for it…. Then God will say: “Write his record in Sijjin (Quran 83:7–9), then let his spirit be thrown out.” … So his spirit is returned to his body, whereupon two angels come and sit by him. They ask him, “Who is your Lord?” and he replies, “Alas I know not.” And they ask him: “What is your religion?” to which he again replies: “Alas I know not.” They ask: “Well, what do you say about this man who was sent among you?” but again he replies: “Alas, I know not.” At which a herald cries from heaven: “He has given My servant (Muhammad) the lie. Spread him a bed from the Fire, clothe him in fire, open for him a door giving out on the Fire, through which its heat and smoke may enter to him, and contract his grave so his ribs pile one upon the other.” Then there approaches him a man, ugly of countenance, ill-dressed and foul-smelling, who says to him: “Receive tidings of that which will grieve you. This is your day which you were promised.” He will ask: “And who are you?” to which the man will reply: “I am your evil deeds,” whereat he will say: “O Lord, let not the Hour arrive, let not the Hour arrive.” (Samarqandi, The Arousement of the Heedless) [JEFFERY 1962: 208–210]
The narrative is smooth and reassuring, but there were doctrinal problems here, at least early on in Islam. They can still be heard echoing in this theological manual written by al-Nasafi (d. 1114 C.E.).
The Mu‘tazilites, the Jahmites and the Najjarites [that is, the ninth-century rationalizing groups of theologians] teach that neither intelligence nor analogy can accept the reality of the torments of the tomb or the questioning of Munkar and Nakir. (Their argument is that) if He punishes man it must be either that He torments the flesh without the spirit or that He causes the spirit to reenter the body (after death) and then torments it. Now it would be useless to punish the flesh without the spirit for (then) it would not feel the pain, yet it is not possible to think that He causes the spirit to reenter the flesh and then torments it, for if He caused the spirit to reenter the flesh, it would make necessary a second dying, which is not possible for God has said, “Every soul shall taste death” (Quran 3:185), and this verse informs men that they will not taste of death more than once. Since these two possibilities are shown to be hopeless, there remains but the third, namely, that there is no torment in the tomb.
Having stated the objection, Nasafi now supplies the rejoinder.
There is a proof that the torment of the tomb is something which the intelligence can accept. Do you not see that a sleeper’s spirit goes out from him (in sleep) and yet remains connected with the body, so that he may suffer pain in a dream, and both the pain and the relief (from it) reach him? Also conversations take place in dreams because the spirit is (still) connected with the body. It is related of the Prophet, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace, that he was asked how the flesh suffers pain in the grave when there is not spirit in it, and he answered: “In the same way that your tooth suffers pain though there is no spirit in it.” (Thus) the Prophet informed his (questioner) that the tooth may be subject to pain because it is connected with the flesh, even though there is no spirit in it, and so, in like manner after death, because a man’s spirit is (still) connected with his body, the body may feel pain. (Nasafi, The Sea of Discussion on the Science of Theology) [JEFFERY 1962: 436–438]
They say: “O Lord, Twice You made us die, and twice You made us live. We admit our sins. Is there still a way out for us?” (Quran 40:11)
The resurrection of the body, to which this Quranic verse was generally thought to refer, was as difficult a conceptual question for the Muslims as it was for the Christians. Al-Ash‘ari (d. 935 C.E.), one of the first proponents of theology in Islam, attempted a demonstrative proof of its possibility with the new weapons of rational science. At the same time, to defend the usefulness and validity of that science, he made God the theologian in this instance.
Neither Ash‘ari’s attempted demonstration nor a later construct—a spirit that is not in the flesh but somehow remains connected with it to a sufficient extent to allow the body to suffer the physical pains and enjoy the physical pleasures of the afterlife—solved the problem for some. The early rationalizing sectarians may have denied the literal truth of the torment of the tomb, but once the full impact of Greek philosophy began to be felt in Islam, a far greater problem arose: the resurrection of the corruptible body and its reunion with the incorruptible soul. And if this seemed improbable, then equally improbable would be the body’s share in either the physical pains of Hell or the physical pleasures of Paradise. Ibn Sina (d. 1038 C.E.), a thinker deeply imbued with Greek philosophy, but a Muslim withal, attempts to solve the problem by invoking the imaginative faculty, which does survive death and which can picture, and so enable the soul to react to, the pains or the pleasures of Paradise.
This is ingenious but it was not very convincing to Ghazali, who, as we have already seen, pointed out in his Incoherence of the Philosophers that the literal resurrection of the body, and the literal truth of the pains of Gehenna and the pleasures of Paradise, was one of the irreconcilable issues that separated the philosophical from the Islamic tradition. And the chief offender in the Muslim camp was no less than Ibn Sina himself, who is here reflecting more generally on the question of the afterlife.
The Afterlife is a notion received from religious teaching; there is no way of establishing its truth save by way of religious dogma and acceptance of the prophets’ reports as true; these refer to what will befall the body at the resurrection, and those corporeal delights or torments which are too well known to require restating here. The true religion brought into this world by our Prophet Muhammad has described in detail the state of happiness or misery awaiting us hereafter so far as the body is concerned. Some further support for the idea of the hereafter is attainable through reason and logical demonstration—and this is confirmed by prophetic teaching—namely, that happiness or misery posited by spiritual apprisement, though it is true that our conjecture falls short of realizing a full picture of them now, for reasons which we shall explain. Metaphysicians have a greater desire to achieve this spiritual happiness than the happiness which is purely physical; indeed, they scarcely heed the latter, and were they granted it would not consider it of great moment in comparison to the former kind, which is proximity to the First Truth, in a matter to be described presently. Let us therefore consider this (spiritual) state of happiness, and of contrasting misery; the physical sort is fully dealt with in the teachings of religion. (Ibn Sina, Book of Deliverance) [AVICENNA 1951: 64]
If this seems innocuous enough, we should recall a text of the same work already cited in chapter 3 above, where Avicenna remarks on the methods of the prophet-lawgiver.
The prophet’s duty is to teach men to know the majesty and might of God by means of symbols and parables drawn from things which they regard as mighty and majestic, imparting to them simply this much, that God has no equal, no like and no partner. Similarly he must establish in them a belief in an afterlife in a manner that comes within the range of their imagination and will be satisfying to their souls; he will liken the happiness and misery to be experienced there in terms which they can understand and conceive. (Ibn Sina, Book of Deliverance) [AVICENNA 1951: 44–45]
Ibn Rushd (d. 1198 C.E.), a Spanish philosopher who took his Muslim faith seriously, attempted to answer Ghazali, and he too begins where Ibn Sina had, on the very nature of eschatological revelation, in a text cited in part at the very beginning of this chapter.
All religions agree on the fact that souls experience states of happiness or misery after death, but they disagree in the manner of symbolizing these states and explaining their existence to men. And it seems that the kind of symbolization that is found in this religion of ours is the most perfect means of explanation to the majority of men and provides the greatest stimulus to their souls to the life beyond; and the primary concern of religions is with the majority…. It seems that corporeal symbolization provides a stronger stimulus to the life beyond than spiritual; the spiritual (kind) is more acceptable to the class of debating theologians, but they are the minority.
For this reason we find the people of Islam divided into three sects with regard to the understanding of the symbolization which is used in (the texts of) our religion referring to the states of the future life. One sect holds that existence is identical with this existence here with respect to bliss and pleasure, i.e., they hold that it is the same sort and that the two existences differ only in respect to permanence and limit of duration, i.e., the former is permanent and the latter is of limited duration. Another group holds that there is a difference in the kind of existence. This group has two subdivisions. One subgroup holds that existence symbolized by these sensible images is spiritual, and it has been symbolized thus [that is, in sensible material images] only for the purpose of exposition; these people are supported by many well-known arguments from Scripture, but there would be no point in enumerating them. Another subgroup thinks that it is corporeal, but think that the corporeality of the life beyond differs from the corporeality of this life in that the latter is perishable while the former is immortal. They too are supported by arguments from Scripture….
It seems that this opinion is more suitable to the elite, for the admissibility of this opinion is founded on facts which are not discussed in front of everyone. One is that the soul is immortal. The other is that the return of the soul (after death) to other bodies does not involve the same absurdity as its return to these same (earthly) bodies. This is because it is apparent that the material of the bodies that exist here is successively transferred from one body to another…. Bodies like these cannot possibly all exist actually (at the same time), because their material is one. A man dies, for instance, his body is transformed into dust, that dust is transformed into a plant, another man feeds on that plant; then semen proceeds from him, from which another man is born. But if other bodies are supposed, this state of affairs does not follow as a consequence. (Ibn Rushd, Unveiling of the Programs of Proof) [AVERROES 1961: 76–77]
And this is in fact Ibn Rushd’s own view, expressed when he takes Ghazali on directly, in his Incoherence of the Incoherence.
What Ghazali says against them [that is, the philosophers] is right, and in refuting them it must be admitted that the soul is immortal, as is proved by rational and religious proofs, and it must be assumed that what arises from the dead are simulacra of these earthly bodies, not these bodies themselves, for that which has perished does not return individually and a thing can only return as an image of that which has perished, not as a being identical with what has perished, as Ghazali declares. (Ibn Rushd, Incoherence of the Incoherence 586) [AVERROES 1954: 1:362]
A trace of purgatory-like state in Islam, or at least a discussion of the premises—namely, that punishment after death is (1) remedial in its intention, and hence (2) temporary and finite—occurs in Zamakhshari’s treatment of Sura 11:103–110.
In this surely is a sign for him who fears the torment of the Hereafter, the day when mankind will be assembled together, which will be a day when all things would become evident. We are deferring it only for a time ordained. The day it comes no soul will dare say a word but by His leave, and some will be wretched and some will be blessed. And those who are doomed will be in Hell; for them there will be sighing and sobbing, where they will dwell so long as heaven and earth endure, unless your Lord will otherwise. Verily, your Lord does as He wills. Those who are blessed will be in Paradise, where they will dwell so long as heaven and earth survive, unless your Lord wills otherwise: this will be a gift uninterrupted. (Quran 11:103–108)
Is it conceivable, then, as this sura seems to suggest, that Paradise and Gehenna will survive only so long as this finite heaven and earth of ours? Zamakhshari comments:
So long as heaven and the earth endure: There are two possible meanings here. First, the heaven and the earth of the Hereafter are being referred to, since these endure forever. That the Hereafter does possess heaven and earth is shown by the words of God [14:48 and 39:74]…. Since it is essential for the inhabitants of the Hereafter that something exist that will bear and shelter them, then either there must exist a heaven or else the Throne (of God) must shelter them. Anything that shelters someone is, in effect, a kind of heaven. Or second, this (“so long as”) is an expression for affirming (perduration) and for denying termination. Thus the Arabs say … “so long as a star shines” and other similar formulas affirming (perduration).
Could God end Paradise and Gehenna by His own will then? Zamakhshari continues:
Someone may now ask: What is the meaning of the exception referred to in God’s words “except as your Lord wills”? For it is certain that the inhabitants of Paradise and those of hell fire will remain there forever without exception. My response is that the exception refers to eternal persistence in the punishment by fire and eternal stay in the blessing of the Garden. The inhabitants of the hell fire will not continue to be punished only by fire; rather, they will also be punished through severe frost and in other ways, and especially by a punishment which is stronger than all these kinds, namely, that God will be angry with them, will reject them, will regard them as contemptible. By the same token, the inhabitants of Paradise will enjoy, in addition to the Garden, something more important and more moving than that, namely, the complaisance that God will have in them. Thus God says:
“God has promised men and women who believe gardens with streams of running water where they will abide forever, and beautiful mansions in the Garden of Eden, and the blessings of God above all. That will be happiness supreme.” (Quran 9:72)
Thus, in addition to the reward of the Garden, they receive yet another gift of God, the nature of which no one knows but Him. This is what is meant by the exception.
But the exegesis of the passage is not yet complete. The asseveration “Verily, your Lord does as He wills” raises another possibility, the one that makes the Christian position on Purgatory possible. Zamakhshari dismisses it immediately, however.
The meaning of God’s words “Surely your Lord does as He wills” … is as follows: He allots whatever He wills as punishment to the inhabitants of hell fire, just as He grants His gifts unceasingly to the inhabitants of Paradise. One should reflect upon this, since one part of the Quran explains another. One should not be deceived here by the assertion of the Mujbira [that is, those who oppose the doctrine of free will], who maintain that the (first) exception means that the people of grave sins will be brought out of hell fire through intercession. For the second exception (“Surely your Lord does as He wills”) clearly accuses them of falsehood and proves they lie.
There is also a Prophetic tradition much to the same point as the contention of the Mujbira, and Zamakhshari now turns to it.
But what are we to think of those who repudiate the Book of God on the basis of a Prophetic tradition which has come down to them from a nonexpert like Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As? According to this tradition, a day will come when the gates of Gehenna will be closed and no longer will anyone be inside. And this is supposed to happen after the inhabitants have been there for a very long time. It has come to my attention that those who let themselves be misled by this tradition and believe that the unbelievers will not remain forever in hell fire have fallen prey to this error. This and similar views are clear deceptions, from which may God preserve us! … If this tradition according to Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As is sound, then its meaning can only be that the unbelievers will come out of the heat of the fire and into the cold of severe frost. Only in this sense would Gehenna be empty and its gates closed. (Zamakhshari, ad loc.)
The Quranic proof-text on the vision of God occurs in Sura 75.
You love this transient life,
And neglect the Hereafter.
How many faces will be refulgent on that Day,
Looking toward their Lord;
And how many faces on that day will be woe-begone
Thinking that some great disaster is about to fall upon them.
(Quran 75:20–25)
The theologian Ash‘ari (d. 935 C.E.) offers his direct and succinct exegesis of a text that already in his day had become the subject of controversy. He begins by rejecting the parallel to other Quranic uses of the same verb “looking toward” in contexts where it means “considering as an example” or “feeling sympathy for” or “expecting.” “And so,” Ash‘ari concludes:
… it is certain that His words “looking toward their Lord” mean “seeing” since they cannot be any of the other kinds of “looking toward.” For if “looking” is limited to four kinds, and three are impossible in the present case, the fourth kind must be certain, namely, the “look” of the seeing of the eye which is in the face.
But there is a possible objection arising from the next phrase. Ash‘ari’s exegesis now takes the form of a scholastic disputation with an anonymous opponent.
But has not God (also) said, “And on that day other faces will be despondent thinking that some great disaster will fall upon them” (Quran 75:24–25)? But thinking is not done with the face, and so similarly His words “ … looking at their Lord” must mean the “look” of the heart.
Your objection has no force [Ash‘ari responds] because thinking is not done with the face but only with the heart [that is, with an interior faculty]. Hence, since God coupled thinking with a mention of the face, it must mean the thinking of the heart because thinking is done only with the heart. And if “looking” were (likewise) restricted to the heart, His mentioning it in connection with the face would have to refer to the heart. But since “looking” may be done with the face and in other ways, in connecting it with a reference to the face, He must mean by it the “looking” of the face.
The anonymous objector brings another text into play.
Question: Then what is the meaning of His words, “Eyes do not attain Him but He attains to eyes” (Quran 6:103)?
Response: They refer to this life, [Ash‘ari] responds, and not the next. Hence, since He says in another verse that eyes will look at Him, we know that the time of which He says that eyes do not attain Him is different from the time in which He has revealed that they will be looking at Him….
Question: If His words “Eyes do not attain Him” refer to one time [that is, this life] rather than to another [the Afterlife], then why do you deny that His words “Slumber lays not hold of Him, nor sleep” (Quran 2:255) refer to one time rather than another?
Response: … Sleep is a defect that subsists in the sleeper and deprives him of knowledge; but seeing is not a defect which finds its locus in what is seen, and therefore seeing [or rather, being seen] need not be denied for the same reason which compels the denial of sleep. (Ash‘ari, The Science of Dialectical Theology 75–79) [ASH‘ARI 1953: 48–51]