al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah – Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• How ʿilm al-kalām entered the Muslims in the second century after the Hijrah, taken from the Jews, Christians and Sabians in places such as Shām and Ḥarrān

• aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī (raḥimahullāh): "He is exalted above limits and boundaries, parts, limbs and instruments"

• Why this statement is problematic: it is ambiguous, carrying a true and a false meaning

• The meanings of "ḥadd" and the theologians' cosmological argument

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Recap: the believers seeing Allāh in the Hereafter, raised straight after the Qurʾān as Allāh's uncreated speech

• aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī (raḥimahullāh): "For our Lord is described with the attributes of oneness and qualified with the qualities of uniqueness; no one from creation shares them"

• The meaning of the ambiguous terms in his statement, including "instruments" (al-adawāt)

• What is negated is the claim of those who liken Allāh to a human of flesh, blood and bones

• Questions and answers

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• After the ruʾyah, aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī gives seven or eight sentences on the methodology of the Salaf in dealing with the attributes

• Some denied the ruʾyah altogether, like the Jahmiyyah and Muʿtazilah, while others reinterpreted it as mere knowledge of Allāh

• "Everything that has come of that in the authentic ḥadīth from the Messenger ﷺ is as he said, and its meaning is as he intended"

• Whoever interprets it by his own presumption or understanding has invalidated his belief in the ruʾyah

• "Its interpretation is to abandon interpretation and to submit": what Allāh and His Messenger intended is the true taʾwīl

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• The believers seeing their Lord (ar-ruʾyah) in the Hereafter, one of the major controversies in creed after the issue of the Qurʾān

• aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī (raḥimahullāh): "Its explanation is upon what Allāh intended and knew"

• Commentaries on the proofs of the vision

• Next: aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī's statements against likening Allāh to His creation (tashbīh)

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• The structure so far: tawḥīd and the names and attributes, then prophethood, then the major issues of the time

• The people of kalām borrowed Greek concepts and terminology, leading to deviant positions on Allāh's speech among the Jahmiyyah, Muʿtazilah, Karrāmiyyah, Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs

• Beginning the second major issue in aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī: "The seeing of Allāh is true for the people of Paradise"

• The position of Ahl as-Sunnah, their proofs, and their argument against the people of innovation, leaving the "how" to Allāh

• Questions at the end: the Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs in essence agree with the Jahmiyyah, as noted by Abū Naṣr as-Sijzī in his book on Allāh's speech

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Recap: aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī (raḥimahullāh): "The Qurʾān is the speech of Allāh; it began from Him as speech without how…"

• The Qurʾān is not the speech of man, and from this angle its miraculous nature is shown

• Its words appeal to the souls, yet many turn away

• A view held by one Muʿtazilī figure, showing that not every view of a sect is held by all of them

• Questions and answers

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Recap of aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī's descriptions of the Prophet ﷺ, completing the kalimah

• Aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī begins the great historical issue between Ahl as-Sunnah and the people of kalām: the Qurʾān as the speech of Allāh

• Background on the core issues of the 2nd and 3rd centuries: Allāh's ʿuluww, seeing Allāh in the Hereafter, and His speech

• With the brief commentary of Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Fawzān (hafidhahullāh)

• The verses of al-Muddaththir on the man who called the Qurʾān "the speech of a man", and aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī's argument that Allāh's threat of Saqar proves it is His speech

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Continuing Shaykh Ṣāliḥ Āl ash-Shaykh (hafidhahullāh)'s commentary on aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī's statements on the prophethood of Muḥammad ﷺ

• Recap: the philosophers saw prophets as men of strong imagination who invented "revelation" for moral ends, which is kufr

• Some of the people of kalām restricted proof of prophethood to miracles alone, while Ahl as-Sunnah also look to the message, character, words and deeds of the prophet

• The Bāṭiniyyah and their division into outward and inward meanings: the ʿUbaydīs who founded Cairo and invented the Mawlid, and the Qarāmiṭah who attacked the Kaʿbah

• Later Ṣūfism became a vehicle for undermining Islām, unlike the early asceticism of Baṣrah that held to the Sunnah

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Recap: aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī introduces the prophethood and messengership of Muḥammad ﷺ after tawḥīd, as an explanation of the Kalimah

• The commentary of Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Fawzān (hafidhahullāh) on these statements

• "We sent to every nation a messenger" (an-Naḥl 16:36)

• The Prophet ﷺ sent to all mankind, and the religion preserved from alteration, with someone always clarifying the truth

al-ʿAqīdah aṭ-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, taught by Shaykh Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq (hafidhahullāh)

• Aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī moves to the second part of the kalimah: belief in the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ (point 41 in Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Fawzān's explanation)

• "Muḥammad is His chosen servant, His selected Prophet and His Messenger with whom He is pleased": three descriptions

• Then four titles: the Seal of the Prophets, the Imām of the pious, the chief of the Messengers and the beloved of the Lord of the worlds

• His message is general to all mankind and jinn, Arab and non-Arab (Sabaʾ 34:28, al-Aʿrāf 7:158)

• Refuting the Christian claim that he was a true prophet sent only to the Arabs