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The Qadariyya, Muʿtazila, and Shīʿa

by GF Haddad - Shawwāl 1423


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”The way of the People of Truth is to firmly believe in Divinely Foreordained Destiny. The meaning of this is that Allāh Most High has foreordained matters from pre-eternity and that He knows that they shall take place at times known to Him and at places known to Him; and they do occur exactly according to what He has decreed.” Imām al-Nawawī

These three groups are essentially one and the same in their setting up reason as the ultimate criterion of truth and in several of their fundamental tenets of doctrine such as their denial of the reality of the life of the grave, the torture of the Fire, the delights of Paradise, the beatific vision, the uncreatedness of the Qur'ān, and especially in their annullment of the reality of the Divine Attributes apart from the Essence and their rejection of the Divine foreordainment (al-qadar) of evil on the rational grounds that "Allāh cannot but will good" - in effect setting up as many co-creators for evil as there are acts. Muʿtazilīs and Qadarīs also deny intercession (shafāʿa) and the karāmāt of the Awliyā'. "All Muʿtazilīs are Qadarīs but not vice-versa" (al-Maghnīsāwī). Modernists are fond of Muʿtazilism as
1. it affords them a historical antecedent without which their novelty shows too plainly,
2. it provides them with language against the Ulema of Ahl al-Sunna,
3. it allows them to re-mould their ignorance of the Sunna and even their atheism into a methodological posture.

The Prophet ﷺ upon him blessings and peace - said: "Disputing foreordained destiny (qadar) is for the worst of my Community at the end of time."[1] Al-Suyūtī succinctly defined Qadarī doctrine as "the claim that evil is created by human beings"[2] Ibn Abī Yaʿlā relates the following description of the Qadariyya: "They are those who claim that they possess in full the capacity to act (al-istitāʿa), free will (al-mashī'a), and effective power (al-qudra). They consider that they hold in their grasp the ability to do good and evil, avoid harm and obtain benefit, obey and disobey, and be guided or misguided. They claim that human beings retain full initiative, without any prior status within the will of Allāh for their acts, nor even in His knowledge of them. Their doctrine is similar to that of Zoroastrians and Christians. It is the very root of heresy."[3]

The Qadariyya or "Libertarians" are little different from the rationalists known as the Muʿtazila or "Isolationists." Both are traced back to the same founders: ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd Abū ʿUthmān al-Basrī (d ~144) who left al-Hasan al-Basrī's teaching circle and "isolated" himself, and Maʿbad al-Juhanī (d 80) "the first who spoke about qadar in al-Basra."[4] Al-Dhahabī introduces the former as "the ascetic (al-zāhid), the devout (al-ʿābid), the Qadarī, the elder of the Muʿtazila and the first of them"[5] while al-Ajurrī relates from al-Awzāʿī that Maʿbad took Qadarī doctrine from a Christian who temporarily turned Muslim then Christian again; then Ghaylān ibn Muslim learned it from Maʿbad. [6]

The name of Qadariyya highlights the doctrine of qadar, while the name of Muʿtazila refers to the broader "Five Principles" - tawhīd, ʿadl, thawāb, īmān, and amr bi al-maʿrūf which al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī refuted in whole and in detail in many of their books. Following is a survey of these Five Principles integral to Muʿtazilī doctrine:[7]

1. In the chapter of tawhīd, the Muʿtazila - and the Shīʿa in their wake - held that Allāh cannot be seen at all, whether in the world or on the Day of Resurrection as that would necessitate corporeality and direction for Him. In contrast, Ahl al-Sunna held that Allāh will most certainly be seen by the believers on the Day of Resurrection without our specifying how. Al-Ashʿarī authored several refutations of the Muʿtazilī and Shīʿī view, and the early Hanbalīs considered that the belief that Allāh will not be seen on the Day of Resurrection entails kufr.[8] Furthermore, the Muʿtazila - and the Shīʿa in their wake - held that the Attributes are none other than the Essence, otherwise, they claimed, there would be a multiplicity of Pre-eternal Entities (qudamā'); therefore, to them, the Qur'ān is created and both they and the Shīʿīs deny the reality and pre-existence of the Attribute of Divine Speech. The vast majority of the early Muslims including Ahl al-Bayt reject this fallacious reasoning as summed up by Imām Mālik: "The Qur'ān is the Speech of Allāh, the Speech of Allāh is part of Him (wakalāmullāhi minhu), and nothing created is part of Allāh Most High" [9]. Similarly al-Tahāwī said of the Qur'ān in his "Creed of Abū Hanīfa and his Companions" known as the ʿAqīda Tahāwiyya: "It is not created like the speech of creatures". This is the position of the totality of the Salaf including the Four Imāms and their immediate colleagues, in addition to Sufyān al-Thawrī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, al-Awzāʿī, Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad (Jaʿfar al-Sādiq), Abū Jaʿfar al-Tabarī, Dāwūd ibn Khalaf, Zayd ibn ʿAlī and others of Ahl al-Bayt, Ishāq ibn Rāhūyah, al-Bukhārī and his 1,000 shaykhs by his own verbatim report in Khalq Afʿāl al-ʿIbād, and countless others of the pious Predecessors. Dr. Saʿīd al-Būtī wrote:

The Muʿtazila denied the existence of the "Attributes of Meanings" (sifāt al-maʿānī), asserting that Allāh is Knower without being characterized by any Attribute of Knowledge (sifat al-ʿilm), and Powerful without being characterized by any Attribute of Power (sifat al-qudra). The only reason that made them adopt this position is their notion that to attribute such an essential Attribute (sifa dhātiyya) to Allāh Most High entails assent to a multiplicity of beginningless entities (taʿaddud al-qudamā') equalling the number of these Attributes, which assent constitutes disbelief by unanimous agreement. Therefore, they said that His "being-knower" (ālimiyyatuhu) and "being-powerful" (qādiriyyatuhu) are necessarily true of His essence and need not, in order to exist, Knowledge and Power, contrary to the case for human beings. They also said that Allāh Most High is perfect and complete in His essence, so that, if we said that His "being-knower" is established by means of the Attribute of knowledge, then His essence would be lacking something since it needs, for its completion, an external means - a position that is unanimously null and void.

The above are all specious claims to which the Muʿtazilī perspective gave rise due to their burdening reason with more than its capacity in these matters. This is their well-known method. What is impossible in the multiplicity of beginningless entities is that the beginningless essences be multiple - not the Attributes of a single essence.[10] Now, the "being-knower" of Allāh is nothing more than the ascription of the Attribute of knowledge itself to Allāh Most High. Nowhere in this is there anything "needing" nor anything "needed". This also tells you that the ascription of the Attribute of knowledge to Him does not entail His being completed by means of something other than Him.

There is proof enough for us that Allāh ascribed to Himself the Attribute of Knowledge in the verse { they encompass nothing of His knowledge save what He will } (2:255).[11] It is natural that reason categorically assimilate His other Attributes with this one, ascribing to Him, similarly, the Attributes of life, power, hearing, sight, etc.

The adduction of this verse as proof is well-established, even if we interpret the terms "knowledge" in it to mean "the known" (al-maʿlūm), although there is no necessity for such interpretation. For if knowledge were not firmly established for Allāh Most High, He would not have attributed it to Himself nor signified the object of the known by it. Thus the signifying of "the known" by "knowledge" is still a branch of the validity of the ascription of Knowledge to Allāh Almighty.[12]

2. In the chapter of Divine Justice (al-ʿadl), the Muʿtazila - and the Qadariyya, Shiʿa, and Christians likewise - held that Allāh Most High cannot possibly create the evil deeds of His servants, therefore they are in charge of their own destinies and create the latter themselves through a power which Allāh Most High deposited in them. This heresy is the core of Qadarī belief and was refuted by Imām al-Ashʿarī in his book Khalq al-Aʿmal, his student Ibn Khafīf in his al-ʿAqīda al-Sahīha (§40: "Acts belong to Allāh, not to creatures, while earning - al-iktisāb - belongs to creatures, but earning is created by Allāh, not by them") and, before them, by al-Bukhārī in his Khalq Afʿāl al-ʿIbād.

3. In the chapter of Reward and Punishment, the Muʿtazila held that Allāh, of necessity, rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil. This was refuted by Ibn Khafīf who summed up the Sunni position in his al-ʿAqīda al-Sahīha (§32-34): "Allāh is doer of what He will: Injustice is not attributed to Him, And He rules over His dominion as He will, without [anyone's entitlement to] objection whatsoever." I.e. He rewards and punishes without being obliged to do so by the actions of His servants and He is free to place the disbeliever in Paradise and the believer in Hellfire without any injustice on His part, since He owns all sovereignty over the heavens and the earth, and no one received any share of authority from Him to object to what He does.[13] Further (§80), "The believers shall be brought out of the Fire, and great sins (al-kabā'ir) will not cause those who committed them to remain therein eternally." The Muʿtazila denied all this and further held that Allāh does not forgive grave sinners unless they repent before death, even if they are Muslims. Al-Māturīdī refuted this position in his book Radd Waʿid al-Fussaq ("The Refutation of the [Doctrine of the] Eternal Damnation of Grave Sinners"). The Muʿtazila also denied the Prophet's intercession - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace, since he said: "My intercession is for the grave sinners of My Community."[14] Al-Hākim stated, after narrating this hadīth: "It contains a rebuttal of the innovators who differentiated between intercession for light and grave sinners."[15] Ibn Hajar similarly adduced this hadīth against the Muʿtazila by saying: "He did not restrict his intercession to those who repented."[16] Ibn Abī ʿAsim even mentioned the apostasy of those who deny the Prophet's intercession - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace, as it is related through mass transmission (tawātur).[17]

4. In the chapter of īmān the Muʿtazila held that grave sinners were considered neither believers nor disbelievers and so construed for them a "half-way status" between the two (al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn). They claimed that grave sinners belonged eternally in the Fire - as mentioned in the previous heading - but in a less harsh situation than pure disbelievers.

5. Finally the Muʿtazila held, as do Ahl al-Sunna and the Shiʿa, that commanding goodness and forbidding evil was obligatory upon the believers. However, in deriving this and the previous four headings, the Muʿtazila and Shiʿa gave precedence to reason and reason-based methods over the Sunna, the Sunna-based principles of the Imāms of the Salaf, and the Consensus of the Companions and Salaf. They picked and chose whatever verses and narrations suited their views and rejected the rest either through manipulation of the meanings or through flat denial of the authenticity of transmission, as did the rest of the sects with limited or no knowledge of the Sunna and its methodology.

Al-Nawawī on the Muʿtazila and Qadariyya

Imām al-Nawawī (d. 676) gave the following explanations of the belief in Foreordained Destiny (qadar) in his "Commentary on the Forty Hadīths":

The way of the People of Truth is to firmly believe in Divinely Foreordained Destiny. The meaning of this is that Allāh Most High has foreordained matters from pre-eternity and that He knows that they shall take place at times known to Him and at places known to Him; and they do occur exactly according to what He has decreed.

Know that there are four kinds of destiny:

(a) Destiny in the Divine Foreknowledge. It is said concerning it: Care (ʿināya) before friendship (wilāya), pleasure before childbirth, and continual harvest from first-fruits. Allāh the Exalted said: { He is made to turn away from it who has been made to turn away } (51:9).[18] In other words, one is turned away from hearing the Qur'ān and from believing in this life who was driven from them in pre-eternity. The Messenger of Allāh - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace - said: "Allāh does not destroy except one who is already destroyed."[19]

(b) Destiny in the Preserved Tablet. Such Destiny may be changed. Allāh said: { Allāh erases what He will, and He consolidates what He will, and with Him is the Mother of the Book } (13:39).[20] We know that Ibn ʿUmar used to say in his supplications: "O Allāh, if You have foreordained hardship for me, erase it and write felicity for me."

(c) Destiny in the womb concerning which the angel is ordered to foreordain one's sustenance, term of life, and whether he shall be miserable or prosperous

(d) Destiny which consists in joining specific fore-written matters to the appointed times in which they are to befall. For Allāh the Exalted has created both good and evil and has ordained that they should befall His servant at times appointed by Him.

The evidence that Allāh Almighty created both good and evil is His saying:
{ The guilty are in error and madness. On the day they are dragged to the fire on their faces, they will be told: 'Taste the touch of hell.' Lo! We created everything with proportion and measure (qadar) } (54:47-49). That verse was revealed concerning the proponents of absolute freewill or Qadariyya who were thus told: "That belief of yours is in hellfire."

As further evidence of what has been decreed, the Exalted said:
{ Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of the Cleaving from the evil of what He has created. } (113:1). The reading of that oath at the time something good befalls the servant of Allāh will repel foreordained evil before it reaches him. Also mentioned in the hadīth, good deeds and upholding family ties repel a bad death and eventually turn it into a good one.[21] Also, "Supplication (al-duʿā') and affliction (al-balā') are suspended between heaven and earth, vying, and supplication repels affliction before the latter comes down."[22]

The Muʿtazila claimed that Allāh the Exalted has not foreordained matters, that His knowledge does not precede them, that they begin to exist only when they occur and that He knows them only at that time. They lied concerning Allāh Exalted is He above their falsehoods, and higher yet. They went into oblivion.

Now the latter-day Qadariyya say that the good is from Allāh while the bad is from other than Him. Allāh is also Exalted beyond such a statement. In a sound hadīth the Prophet - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace - said: "The Qadariyya are the Zoroastrians (majūs) of this Community."[23] He named them Zoroastrians because their school of thought resembles that of Zoroastrian dualism. The Dualists claim that good is effected by light and evil by darkness, and thus earned their name. Similarly the proponents of free will ascribe the good to Allāh and the bad to other than Him, whereas He is the creator of both good and evil.

The Imām of the Two Sanctuaries said in his Kitāb al-Irshād that some of the Qadariyya said: "It is not we but you (Ahl al-Sunna) who are the Qadariyya because of your belief in so-called Foreordained Destiny."[24] [Ibn] al-Juwaynī answered these ignoramuses that they had ascribed the power of decree to themselves, and whoever claimed, for example, the power of evil and ascribed it to himself, he has earned its label, rather than one who ascribes it to other than himself and denies any authorship of it.

But Allah knows best.

Blessings and peace on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions.

Hajj Gibril
GF Haddad

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1. Narrated from Abū Hurayra by al-Tabarānī in al-Awsat, al-Hākim, and al-Bazzār in his Musnad with a sound chain as stated by al-Haythamī in Majmaʿ al-Zawā'id

2. In Tadrīb al-Rāwī (1:389).

3. In Tabaqāt al-Hanābila (1:32) in the entry of Ahmad ibn Jaʿfar al-Istakhri.

4. Narrated from Yahyā ibn Yaʿmar by Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, and Abū Dāwūd

5. Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalā' (6:330 #858). He returned onto the Ahl al-Sunna the label of Qadariyya - in the opposite sense of those who over-emphasize the Divine Foreordained Destiny - in a book entitled al-Radd ʿalā al-Qadariyya.

6. Al-Ajurrī, al-Sharīʿa (p. 251).

7. Adapted from Abū Zahra, Abū Hanīfa (p. 129-130).

8. See Tabaqāt al-Hanābila (1:59, 1:161, 1:312) and our article on the vision of Allāh in the world and hereafter.

9. Narrated by al-Dhahabī in Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalā' (Dār al-Fikr ed 7:416). Cf. Ibn Khafīf, al-ʿAqīda al-Sahīha §26.

10. Cf. al-Ijī, al-Mawāqif (p. 76): "The Muʿtazila said that the Christians committed apostasy only because they assert three pre-eternal Attributes which they call hypostases (aqānīm).... What then about those who assert seven of them? The answer is that the Christians committed apostasy only because they asserted these three pre-eternal Attributes to be Essences (dhawāt), even if they scrupulously avoided naming them so."

11. "What hope can the sciences nourish of encompassing His Essence and Reality? And how can such encompassment even be possible when no space of distance can ever traverse Him in His Might, nor limit (hadd) ever apprehend Him?" Al-Qushayrī, Latā'if (1:209).

12. Al-Būtī, Kubrā al-Yaqīnāt al-Kawniyya (p. 119 n. 1).

13. The Ashʿarī position is that Allāh rewards and punishes without being obliged to do so by the actions of His servants ("Allāh is doer of what He will"), contrary to the Muʿtazilī claim that Allāh, by necessity, rewards those who do good and punishes those who commit evil. Rather than being necessitated to do anything, He is free to place the disbeliever in Paradise and the believer in Hellfire without any injustice on His part ("Injustice is not attributed to Him"), since He owns all sovereignty over the heavens and the earth, and no one received any share of authority from Him to object to what He does. The evidence for this is in the verses: { Know you not that unto Allāh belongs the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth? He punishes whom He will, and forgives whom He will. Allāh is Able to do all things } (5:40); {Say : Who then can do aught against Allāh, if He had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? To Allāh belongs the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what He will. And Allāh is Able to do all things} (5:17); { The sentence that comes from Me cannot be changed, and I am in no wise a tyrant unto the slaves } (50:29). At the same time it is obligatorily known that Allāh does not take back His promise to reward those who believe and do good and punish evil-doers: { But as for those who believe and do good works We shall bring them into gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide for ever. It is a promise from Allāh in truth; and who can be more truthful than Allāh in utterance? } (4:122). The Scholars have described the former evidence as "based on reason" (dalīl ʿaqlī) and the latter as "based on law" (dalīl sharʿī), noting that it is the latter which takes precedence over the former. Cf. al-Būtī, Kubrā al-Yaqīnāt (p. 149).
See also Ibn ʿArabī's ʿAqīda < §168-173 > and Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī's famous debate with the Muʿtazilī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.

14. Narrated from Anas by al-Tirmidhī (hasan sahīh gharīb), Abū Dāwūd, Ahmad with a sound chain per al-Zayn in the Musnad (11:120 #13155), Ibn Hibbān with a sound chain per al-Arna'ūt (14:387 #6468), Ibn Abī ʿAsim in al-Sunna (p. 385 #831-832), Ibn Khuzayma in al-Tawhīd (p. 270), al-Tabarānī in al-Saghīr (1:272 #448) and al-Kabīr (1:258 #749), al-Bayhaqī in al-Sunan al-Kubrā (8:17 #15616, 10:190 #20563), al-Tayālisī (p. 270 #2026), al-Qudāʿī in Musnad al-Shihāb (1:166-167 #236-237), and al-Hākim (1:69) who declared it sahīh and was confirmed by al-Bayhaqī as quoted from al-Sakhāwī in al-Maqāsid al-Hasana (p. 595); also from Jābir by al-Tirmidhī (hasan gharīb), Ibn Mājah, Ibn Hibbān with a sound chain according to Shaykh Shuʿayb al-Arna'ūt (14:386 #6467), Ibn Khuzayma in al-Tawhīd (p. 271), al-Hākim (1:69, 2:382) who declared it sahīh and was confirmed by al-Dhahabī, al-Tayālisī (p. 233 #1669), and al-Ajurrī in al-Sharīʿa (p. 338); also from Ibn ʿUmar by Abū Yaʿlā in his Musnad with a sound chain according to al-Haythamī (7:5) - a fair one according to al-Albānī in Ibn Abī ʿAsim's al-Sunna (p. 384 #830); also from Ibn ʿAbbās by al-Tabarānī in al-Kabīr (11:189 #11454) with a weak chain according to al-Munāwī; and from Kaʿb ibn ʿAjura by al-Khatīb in Tārīkh Baghdād (3:40) with a fair chain as stated in Zawā'id Tārīkh Baghdād (2:274-276 #264) and by al-Ajurrī in al-Sharīʿa (p. 338).

15. In al-Mustadrak (1:69). I.e. those who restricted the benefit of the Prophet's intercession - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace - to light sinners only.

16. In Fath al-Bārī, book of Riqaq ch 51 (1989 ed 11:522; 1959 ed 11:429 #6190). Compare this fundamental doctrine of Ahl al-Sunna to the following statement: "Mercy is only for those who deserve it among the believers. The more the believer fears Allāh, the more he is more meritorious in receiving it. It is not as is falsely hoped by some of the cretins (al-mahābīl) who warble this saying of their poet, al-Būsīrī: It may be that my Lord's mercy, when He distributes it, shall match the transgressions in proportion." Albānī, introduction to al-Sanʿānī's Rafʿ al-Astār (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1984, p. 24-25).

17. In al-Sunna (p. 385). However, the Muʿtazila did concede types of intercession hence they are not disbelievers on this chapter.

18. Al-Qushayrī in his Latā'if (6:29) took the pronoun to refer to the Prophet - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace, in which case the meaning of the verse translates to {He is made to turn away from him who has been made to turn away}.

19. Narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās and Abū Hurayra by al-Bukhārī and Muslim: "None perishes with Allāh except he who is bound for destruction." Ibn Hajar said in Fath al-Bārī (book of Riqaq, Chapter 31 #6491): "That is, he who is adamant in clinging to evil in his resolve, his speech, and his deed, and avoids good by design, speech, and deed."

20. "Divine will (al-mashī'a) is not subject to contingency (al-hudūth), whereas erasure and consolidation (al-mahū wal-ithbāt) are connected to contingency. The Attributes of the Essence - may He be exalted! - such as His Speech and Knowledge, His saying and His judgment, are not part of erasure and consolidation. The latter two are only among the Attributes of act (sifātu fīʿlih). Erasure refers to non-existence (al-ʿadam) while consolidation refers to origination (al-ihdāth). So He erases love of the world from the hearts of ascetics and consolidates in it renunciation instead, as in the report of Hāritha: 'I have turned myself away from this world until its rocks and its gold became the same for me.' He erases from the hearts of the Knowers the lot of the world (al-huzūz) and consolidates His rights instead. He erases from the hearts of the upholders of Oneness (al-muwahhidūn) the witnessing of other than the Real and consolidates the witnessing of the Real instead. He erases the traces of humaneness (al-bashariyya) and consolidates the lights of the witnessing of Unicity. ... It was said that the Mother of the Book is the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfūz) in which He consolidated whatever His knowledge and Judgment have preceded and which will neither be substituted nor changed." Al-Qushayrī, Latā'if (3:234-236).
Al-Qurtubī in his commentary on Sūrat al-Fātiha showed that the term "Mother of the Book" is one of the names of Sūrat al-Fātiha according to the vast majority of the scholars, as stated in the hadīth of the Prophet - upon him blessings and peace: "{ Al-hamdu lillāh } is the Mother of the Qur'ān and the Mother of the Book and the Seven Oft-Repeated." Narrated from Abū Hurayra by al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī (hasan sahīh), Abū Dāwūd, al-Dārimī, and others. Al-Hasan al-Basrī said the Mother of the Book is whatever pertains to the lawful and the illicit (cf. Qur'ān 3:7); Anas and Ibn Sīrīn said it refers to the Preserved Tablet (cf. Qur'ān 43:4). Al-Suyūtī in al-Durr al-Manthūr cited a report from Makhūl that "The Mother of the Book is recitation, question, and supplication."

21. The following hadīths are related from the Prophet ﷺ upon him blessings and peace: "Charity (al-sadaqa) certainly extinguishes the Lord's anger and repels a bad death." Narrated from Anas with a weak chain by al-Tirmidhī (gharīb). Also: "Verily, because of charity and keeping uterine family ties, Allāh increases life, repels a bad death, and repels all kinds of evils." Narrated from by Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawsilī in his Musnad. Also: "Keeping family ties and good manners builds up one's house and increases life." Narrated from ʿA'isha by Ahmad in his Musnad; "Whoever would like for Allāh to increase his income and lengthen his span of life, let him keep family connections." Narrated from Anas by al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, and Ahmad in his Musnad with a fair chain according to Hamza al-Zayn (10:504 #12526).

22. Something similar is authentically related from the Prophet - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace - by the following: Ibn Mājah in the introduction to his Sunan and the book of Fitan (#66); al-Tirmidhī; Ahmad, with three chains in the Musnad; and Ibn Hibbān.

23. A nearly-mass-narrated (mashhūr) hadīth narrated from eight Companions by al-Tirmidhī (hasan), Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Mājah, al-Tabarānī, al-Hākim in al-Mustadrak (1:85), Ahmad in the Musnad, al-Bayhaqī, al-Bazzār, al-Bukhārī in his Tārīkh, al-Lālikā'ī, Ibn ʿAsākir, and others. Also established as authentic is the longer version narrated from Ibn ʿUmar whereby the Prophet said - ﷺ upon him blessings and peace: "Every Community has its Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians of my Community are those who say there is no Foreordained Destiny (qadar). If they fall sick do not visit them, and if they die do not pray over them." Al-Qārī cited five others hadīths against them in his commentary of Abū Hanīfa's Musnad. The chain of this hadīth to Ibn ʿUmar as narrated in the Sunan and by al-Hākim is declared hasan by Ibn Hajar in his Ajwiba ʿalā al-Qazwīnī published in the 1994 edition of al-Qārī's Mirqāt (1:540). As for the similar hadīth on the Murji'a and Qadariyya, Ibn Hajar reads it as a comparison, not an identification.

24. See Ibn al-Juwaynī's al-Irshād ilā Qawatiʿ al-Adilla fī Usūl al-Iʿtiqād ("The Guidance to the Definitive Proofs Concerning the Foundations of Belief"), chapter entitled "The Blame of the Qadariyya" (p. 224-225).


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