Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

another important observation above: ―I found that the Messenger sallallâhu ‘alayhi wa sallam clarified
that which came from His Lord.‖ This is exactly the point I made in Philly and my reason for citing the
Abd Allah report from the Prophet concerning al-Dajjal and his one eye:
―Narrated by Abd Allah: Al-Dajjal was mentioned in the presence of the Prophet. The Prophet
said: ‗Allah is not hidden from you; He is not one-eyed,‘ and pointed with his hand towards his
eye, adding, ‗While Al-Masih Al-Dajjal is blind in the right eye and his eye looks like a protruding
grape‘.‖
The point of this hadith for me was/is the Prophet‘s physical gesture (i.e. pointing to his eye) to clarify
what he means by ‗eye‘. There are several such reports. See e.g. the hadith reported on the authority of
Abu Hurayra and found in Abu Dawud‘s Sunan:
―[Abu Yunus] said: I heard Abu Hurayra recite the verse ‗Surely God commands you to make
over trusts to those worthy of them, and that when you judge between people, you judge with
justice. Surely God admonishes you with what is excellent. Surely God is ever Hearing, Seeing.‘
Then he said: ‗I saw God's messenger [when he recited these last words] put his finger on his ear,
and the next finger on his eye.‘ Abu Hurayra says: ‗I saw God's messenger, when he recited this
[verse], he [so] put his two fingers‘.‖
Ibn Majah reports in his Sunan:
―Ibn Umar reported: I heard Allah‘s Messenger (s) saying while he was on the pulpit, ‗Allah the
Compeller grasps His heavens and His earth in His Hand,‘ and the holy prophet closed his fist
and began to close and open it.‖
These physical gestures made by the Prophet clearly suggest that his intent was for the descriptions to
be taken in the physical sense. According to a tradition on the authority of Jubayr b. Mut‘im and found in
Abu Dawud, Ibn Khuzayma, at-Tabarani and others, God sits on the Throne like a man sitting on a
leather saddle and makes it creak.
―[Jubayr b. Mut'im] narrates: A Bedouin came to find the Messenger of God and said to him:
‗O Messenger of God, the men are all in, the women and the children perish, the resources are
growing thin, the beasts are dying. Pray then to God in our favor so it rains! We ask of you to
intercede for us alongside God, and we ask of God to intercede for us alongside of you.‘
‗Unfortunate one!‘ answered the Messenger of God, ‗do you know what you're saying?‘ Then
he started to say subhana llah, and did not stop repeating it so long as he didn't see his
Companions doing as much. Then he said [to the Bedouin]: ‗Unfortunate one! One does not
ask God to intercede alongside any one of His creatures! God is very much above this!
Unfortunate one! Do you know who God is? (God is on His Throne, which is above His
heavens, and heavens are above His earth,) like this‘—and the Messenger of God put his fingers
in the shape of a tent—and it creaks under Him like the creaking of the saddle under the rider.‖
The Prophet compares Allah sitting on the Throne and making it creak to a man sitting on a saddled
horse and making the saddle creak. The anthropomorphism is blatant. The Prophet‘s physical gesturing
hardly allows us to see in this report anything other than a physical description of God‘s ―establishment‖
on the Throne. This is equally true of the other reports. The Prophet‘s physical gesturing when
mentioning Allah‘s Sifat is no doubt his own tafsir of these Sifat. This is likely the Prophet‘s ―clarification‖
which al-Juwayni refers to above.
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