Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

different opinions between the Sahaaba and Tabieen about whether prophet Muhammad saw
Allah or saw him as a man or young boy… Leaving aside the issue of who is right or wrong, or
whether there were more companions and followers who believed he saw G-d or did not, Dr.
Wesley, in this chapter, documents the fact that this dispute existed long before Imam
Ghazzali…My point here is that these disputes are not taking place hundreds of years later
between the prophet's black Arab companions and foreign white converts flocking to the
religion. This debate is between what he calls the black sheep. For me, this indicates that the
debate over whether prophet Muhammad literally saw G-d or not is not a debate between the
views of original black, Semitic Arabs and "Johnny come-lately" white, non-Semitic, non-
Arabs.‖
There are two problems with this reply, Bro Mubaashir: (1) I never claimed that al-Ghazzali himself
introduced into Islam this bida or innovation. He certainly did not, though his people did. (2) Your use of
my dissertation here is inappropriate and evidences what you readily admitted above, viz. that you
weren‘t able to read the whole thing. That is most obvious here, for reasons I will elucidate below.
Al-Ghazzali, who died in 1128, did not originate the corrupting influence of Hellenism in Islam or
specifically the Arabic version of the Hellenistic ‗spook god‘. Ja‘d b. Dirham (d. 743) and, especially, his
student Jahm b. Safwan (d. 746) did. Both Persians, Ja‘d was the first documented mu‘attila or denier of
the literal reality of Allah‘s Sifat. This is confirmed by Al-Darimi in his Radd al-Jahmiyya, 7; Ibn al-
Imad in his Shadharat, 1:16; Al-Kawthari in his Mugaddimah Tabyin, 12; and Ibn Taymiyah in his al-
Risalah al-Hamawiyyah, 15. He was executed by order of caliph Hisham b. Abd al-Malik because of
this. This Persian convert was, by all accounts, reacting to the popular, Arab understanding of the
scriptural Sifat as literal descriptions of Allah. It was Ja‘d‘s student, Jahm, who developed this ta‟til or
denial of the Sifat into a system of thought. He argued that Allah is ‗no-thing‘, Allah laysa bi shay‟, even
though the Qur‘an and Sunna explicitly describe Allah as a shay‘, thing or delimited being (6:19; Bukhari,
tawhid, 21). Jahm claimed that He had lā yusaf, no attributes. Jahm‘s deity was invisible and immaterial,
and he claimed that Allah ―is not described or known by any attribute or act nor has He any term or
limit; He is not grasped by mind…and whatever may occur to your thought as a shay‘, He is contrary to
that‖. (Does any of this sound familiar?). Abdus Subhan, in his important article ―Al-Jahm Bin Safwân
and His Philosophy,‖ Islamic Culture 11 (1937): 221-227 explains:
―According to al-Jahm, the anthropomorphic expressions of the Qur‘an…cannot be literally
applied to God, because it would signify that He is a material substance…Hence all
anthropomorphic expressions, be they in the Qur‘an or in the Sunnah, are to be understood
figuratively…he holds that God has neither spoken to Moses nor can He speak nor can He see
nor can He be located in a space nor has He a throne for Himself to rest upon…for He is above
Time and Space…God, according to al-Jahm, is something strictly unperceivable…he…for the
first time in history, introduced ta‟wîl (i.e. not taking the expressions of the Qur‘ân and the
Sunnah in their literal and primary sense, but reading a secondary meaning to them instead-of
course not in every case)- a departure from hitherto established convention of literal
interpretation so loyally followed by his predecessors.‖
Please note that it was Jahm who introduced the method of taw‘il or figurative interpretation of the Sifat
into Islam! He innovated this against the general practice of the (largely) Arab Umma at the time which
was ithbat or affirmation of the literal reality of the Sifat. No, the Persian al-Ghazzali didn‘t introduce this
god, but his Persian predecessors Ja‘d and Jahm did. And as Morris Seal correctly pointed out in is study
of Classical Muslim theology: ―Jahm‘s God…was closer to the Greek Absolute than to the God of the
Qur‘an (Muslim Theology: A Study of Origins with Reference to the Church Fathers, 1964, 58).‖There is
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