Iman, Kufr, and Takfir
Question:

Is someone who has an idea that is kufr or “unbelief” thereby an “unbeliever”?

Response:

The short answer, somewhat surprisingly, is “not necessarily.” In some cases such a person is, and in some not. Many people today read an expression labelled in books of Islamic law as kufr, and when they realize that some Muslim they know or have heard of has an idea like it, they jump to the conclusion that he is a kafir. Charging fellow Muslims with unbelief (takfir) is an enormity in the eyes of Allah. It is the fitna or “strife” that destroyed previous faiths, and whose fire in Islamic times was put out with the defeat of the Kharijites, only to be revived on a wholesale scale almost a thousand years later by Wahhabi sect of Arabia in the eighteenth century, from whence its acceptability has spread today to a great many otherwise orthodox Muslims, becoming the bid‘a of our times, and one of the most confusing Islamic issues. A careful answer to the question must look at what kufr means, both in respect to oneself and others, before drawing general conclusions on what legally establishes or acquits a person of the charge of unbelief.

I. Oneself

Life is a gamble, whose stakes are paradise or hell. Allah has explained to us that whoever dies in a state of unbelief without excuse shall be punished in hell forever, just as whoever avoids unbelief shall attain to felicity, even if he should be punished first. Allah Most High says in Sura al-Ra‘d:

“The likeness of paradise, which the godfearing have been promised—rivers flow beneath it, and its fruits are forever, and its shade: that is the requital of the godfearing, while the requital of unbelievers is hell” (Qur’an 13:35).

And He says,

“It is He who created death and life for you that He may try you, as to which of you is best in works. And He is the All-powerful, the Oft-forgiving” (Qur’an 67:2).

This is our test, and the judge is a King, who is not up for reelection. If our ignorance of how He shall judge us in the next world is far greater than our knowledge, we do have enough to go on, and the immense value in His eyes of our lives and actions is certainly plain from the magnitude of the stakes. Those who knew more than anyone about it were more afraid than anyone; namely, the prophets. And the only ones not afraid are those who do not understand.

The hellfire, in its turn, is really a mercy to believers, a fire that Allah has built it in front of the wrong road so that we will not go in the direction leading away from endless happiness. Allah moreover has made the key to paradise a simple matter, to acknowledge that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is His slave and messenger, which entails accepting everything conveyed to us by Allah as He intended it, and everything conveyed to us by the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) as he intended it. From the very simplicity of entering Islam, many Muslims assume that the criterion for leaving it, for kufr, must be equally simple.

It is not. Rather, the things we must believe, “everything conveyed to us by Allah as He intended it, and everything conveyed to us by the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) as he intended it” resolve themselves, upon reflection, into three categories:

(1) matters about Islam that everyone knows, which even a child raised among Muslims would know, technically termed ma‘lum min al-din bi d-darura or “necessarily known as being of the religion”;

(2) matters that not everyone knows;

(3) and matters that are disagreed upon even by “those who know,” the ulema or scholars.

Affirmation or denial of tenets of faith within each category vary in their eternal consequences because of their relative accessibility, and the individual’s opportunities to find them out.

Things That Everyone Knows

To deny anything of the first category above constitutes plain and open unbelief. It includes such things as denying the oneness of Allah, the attributes of prophethood, that prophetic messengerhood has ended with Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace); the resurrection of the dead; the Final Judgement; the recompense; the everlastingness of paradise and hell; the obligatoriness of the prayer, zakat, fasting Ramadan, or the pilgrimage; the unlawfulness of wine or adultery; or anything else that is unanimously concurred upon and necessarily known by Muslims, since there is no excuse not to know these things in the lands of Islam; though for someone new to the religion, or raised in a wilderness, outside of the lands of Islam, or some other place where ignorance of the religion is rife and unavoidable, their ruling becomes that of the second category. As Imam Nawawi explains:

Any Muslim who denies something that is necessarily known to be of the religion of Islam is adjudged a renegade and an unbeliever (kafir) unless he is a recent convert or was born and raised in the wilderness or for some similar reason has been unable to learn his religion properly. Muslims in such a condition should be informed about the truth, and if they then continue as before, they are adjudged non-Muslims, as is also the case with any Muslim who believes it permissible to commit adultery, drink wine, kill without right, or do other acts that are necessarily known to be unlawful (Sharh Sahih Muslim, 1.150).

Things Not Everyone Knows

To deny something of the second category above, tenets of faith that not everyone knows, and that an ordinary Muslim might not know unless it were pointed out to him, is only unbelief (kufr) if he persists in denying it after he understands that it has come to us from Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), since before this, it is not within his power to believe or follow it. This is but divine justice, and plain from the implications of the words of Allah

“We do not charge any soul except in its capacity” (Qur’an 6:152),

and attested to by many hadiths, such that related by Abu Dawud with a well-authenticated (hasan) chain of transmission from Jabir (Allah be well pleased with him), who said,

A donkey that had been branded on the face passed before the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and he said, “Is there anyone among you who has not heard that I have cursed whoever brands or strikes an animal’s face?” (Abu Dawud, 4.26–27: 2564. H).

Although branding or striking an animal’s face is a crime and an enormity (kabira) in Islam, the words “Is there anyone among you who has not heard . . .” indicate that whoever does not know it is wrong is not culpable of it, even if he commits it, until he learns it is wrong. And Allah says in another verse,

“Allah only charges a soul according to what has come to it” (Qur’an 65:7).

In matters of belief, the line traditionally drawn between this type of knowledge and the preceding is their accessibility. A Muslim is responsible to believe everything from Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) that should be obvious to all Muslims, and that every Muslim may reasonably be expected to know. As for what is beyond that, he is only responsible to believe what he has learned of.

Things Disagreed Upon by Ulema

No position upon which one scholar may disagree with another because of evidence from the Qur’an, hadith, or human reason (as opposed to emotive preference) may be a criterion for faith or unfaith (kufr), provided it is a scholarly position, minimally meaning that:

(a) it is not based on a fanciful interpretation of the Qur’an or sunna that violates the grammar or diction of the Arabic Language.

(b) it does not contradict some other evidentiary text that is both

—qat‘i al-wurud or “unquestionably established in its transmission” from Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), whether a verse of the Qur’an, or hadith that is mutawatir or “established by so many channels of transmission (generally held to be at least four) that it is impossible that all could have conspired to fabricate it”;

—and qat‘i al-dalala or “uncontestable as evidence,” meaning a plain text which does not admit of more than one meaning, a plain text which does not admit of more than one meaning, and which no mujtahid can interpret in other than its one meaning or construe in other than its apparent sense;

(c) it does not violate ijma‘ or “scholarly consensus” meaning the agreement of all Islamic mujtahids of a particular era upon a ruling or a point of evidence that bears on a ruling, such as the interpretation of a particular Qur’anic word or phrase;

(d) and it does not violate an a fortiori analogy from either (b) or (c).

Within these minimal parameters of validity, questions that have been disagreed upon by traditional Islamic scholars—those who best know the texts of the Qur’an and sunna—cannot be the criterion of a Muslim’s faith or unfaith. The proof of this is that Allah has ordered us as Muslims to ask scholars by saying,

“Ask those who know well, if you know not” (Qur’an 16:43).

Now, the point of asking scholars is to accept their answer, and few things are more incompatible with divine justice than that the consequence of doing so should be perpetual damnation, as it would if one side of an issue were unbelief. Unfortunately, there are some Muslims today who seem to believe this, the reply to whom we shall see in our discussion of sects below.

To summarize, our Creator is well aware that a great many of the things we know are learned from other people, and has made allowance for this in even the most imperative of commands, that of iman. The Testification of Faith by which we become Muslim means accepting everything conveyed to us by Allah and His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace). But because the details are only known through others, our responsibility for believing in them varies among the three categories we have mentioned: (1) things every Muslim usually knows, (2) things not every Muslim usually knows, and (3) things disagreed upon even by Muslims who know, the ulema or scholars. The first we must know and believe in, the second we must believe in as soon as we know, and the third, even if one position is stronger than others, cannot be a criterion for kufr or iman. If these distinctions are indispensable for judging one’s own faith, there are even more indispensable for judging that of other people, and so directly enter into the question of takfir or “declaring others unbelievers,” which forms the second part of our investigation, to which we now turn.

II. Others

The first thing to know about declaring someone an unbeliever is that the ‘aqida or “Islamic belief” of anyone who has spoken the Testification of Faith “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,” is legally valid until incontrovertibly proven otherwise. This principle is attested to by the hadith of Usama ibn Zayd (Allah be well pleased with him):

The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) sent us on an foray, and we made a surprise attack at dawn on al-Huruqat in the lands of Juwayna. I caught up with a man, and he said, “There is no god but Allah,” and I ran him through. I later had afterthoughts, and mentioned it to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), who said, “He said ‘There is no god but Allah,’ and you killed him?” and I replied, “O Messenger of Allah, he only said it out of fear of the weapon.” He said, “Why didn’t you split him open to see if his heart really said it or not?”—and he kept repeating this till I wished I had not become a Muslim before that day (Muslim, 1.96–97: 96. S).

Despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence that the man only said this Testification to save his life—indeed it was almost absurd to believe otherwise—the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) sternly condemned Usama for not taking the outward sign of Islam at face value, establishing for all time that the primary and ongoing presumption (asl) for another Muslim’s Islamic belief (‘aqida) is that it is sound and acceptable, until there is incontestable proof that it is otherwise.

The Enormity of Charging a Muslim with Unbelief

Judging anyone who regards himself a Muslim to be an unbeliever is a matter not taken lightly by anyone who understands its consequences. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said:

“Whoever charges a believer with unbelief is as though he had killed him” (Bukhari, 8.32: 6105. S).

and,

“Any man who says, ‘O kafir” to his brother, one of them deserves the name”[1] (Bukhari, 8.32: 6104. S).

It is difficult to think of a direr warning, and its purpose is clearly to dissuade Muslims of religion and good sense from judging anyone who professes Islam to be an unbeliever unless there is irrefutable proof.

Then why would anyone do so?

In Muslim society, such a judgement is the business of the qadi or Islamic judge alone, and only because he has to. In cases where he must distinguish between the kufr or iman of a nominally Muslim individual, he does so because of earthly rights and penalties entailed by such a judgement, such as that an apostate’s marriage to a Muslim woman is null and void,[2] the meat he slaughters is not lawful to eat, and his property belongs to the Muslim common fund (bayt al-mal), and so forth. Moreover, these are the responsibility of the Islamic government to implement, and in the absence of such a government, ordinary Muslims may neither judge nor carry out the worldly consequences of such legal rulings because they have no authority to do so, for Islam does not permit vigilante or mob “justice.” Ordinary Muslims other than the qadi are not required to judge the faith in the heart of anyone who has spoken the Shahada or Testification of Faith, with the possible exception of someone married to a spouse who may have left Islam.

The motives today behind careless accusations of unbelief made by Muslims are many, of which few have anything to do with religion. Some of the more obvious are:

—a desire to warn or educate Muslims;

—the need to put oneself up by putting someone else down;

—thirst for fame as a “scholar”;

—the feeling of power through frightening those one informs;

—the thrill of their need to resort to one’s knowledge to get all the details;

—the need to prove one’s group is superior to anyone else;

—malice, envy, or arrogance.

Besides the first, of course, there is nothing for Allah in any of these. All the rest are simply bad, whether found individually, or when confused with the first.

The True Measure of Unbelief

It is axiomatic in Sacred Law that a state whose existence one is certain about does not cease through a state whose existence one is uncertain about. A Muslim’s having validly entered Islam by publicly pronouncing the Testification of Faith is a certitude, while the occurrence of a state of unbelief in his heart can only become a certainty if there is proof. So in matters of faith, a Muslim is always presumed to be a Muslim until there is publicly observable and decisive proof that he has ceased to be one.

We say that such a proof must be “publicly observable” because the above-mentioned hadith of Usama ibn Zayd, according to Nawawi, “attests to the well known principle of fiqh and legal methodology that rulings are based upon outward evidence, while Allah is responsible for the inward” (Sharh Sahih Muslim, 2.107). Ghazali adduces the same hadith to show that

regarding [entering] Islam, the jurist (faqih) but speaks of what makes it legally valid or invalid, not even considering anything besides the tongue. As for the heart, it is not within his jurisdiction, since the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) has put it beyond the reach of those of swords and authority, by saying to the killer of the man who had said the Testification of Islam: “Why didn’t you split him open to see if the heart really said it,” when he offered as an excuse that the man had only said it for fear of the sword (Ihya ‘ulum al-din, 1.17).

And we say that such a proof must be “decisive” because words can mean many things, the speaker might have an excuse, and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said:

Turn aside prescribed penalties from Muslims as much as you can. It there is any excuse, let the defendant off, for it is better for the ruler to make a mistake in an amnesty than to make a mistake in a punishment (Tirmidhi, 4.33: 1422. D).[3]

And Nawawi observes in the introduction to Sharh al-Muhadhdhab, his largest legal work:

It is obligatory for a student to give a positive interpretation to every utterance of his brothers that seems to be wrong until he has exhausted seventy excuses. No one is incapable of this except a failure (Majmu‘, 1.24).

Such excuses, applicable to even the external legal sphere within which a qadi judges, are all the more applicable to someone trying to judge the internal sphere between an individual believer and his fate in the afterlife, especially in view of the basic facts of takfir or “declaring someone an unbeliever” we have outlined above, which, to summarize everything we have said so far are:

(a) that every Muslim’s faith (‘aqida) is valid until proven otherwise;

(b) it is not the legal obligation of the ordinary Muslim to judge another’s faith, but rather that of the qadi, in public cases where this-worldly interests dictate that it must be legally decided;

(c) it is an enormity and a crime to charge a Muslim with unbelief;

(d) the most common motives discernable in our times for declaring others unbelievers are morally repugnant, and themselves sins;

(e) to their own personal sin, factions who declare others unbelievers add the onus of sinning against the Umma through sectarianism, the sunna of the Christians whom the Qur’an says Allah afflicted with enmity and hatred for each other as punishment for forgetting their religion;

(f) the mark of “sects” throughout Islamic history has been their adversarial attitude towards other Muslims;

(g) the true measure of a Muslim’s becoming a non-Muslim is legal proof that is both publicly observable and decisive;

(h) it is incompatible with Allah’s justice and the Qur’an that any scholarly position about which major authorities among the Islamic ulema differ could be the decisive criterion of any Muslim’s faith;

(i) it is obligatory in Islamic law to avert prescribed penalties (hudud), including the penalty for apostasy, by adducing extenuating circumstances (shubuhat) that exculpate the accused.

Given these conclusions, and the obligatory character of averting harm from Muslims, the final part of our answer shall focus upon two broad categories among the least known today of extenuating circumstances that acquit Muslims of kufr, the first relating to the criteria for such judgements, and the second relating to the accused himself.

III. The Legal Criteria for Unbelief

Words That Entail Leaving Islam

The Usama ibn Zayd hadith shows that a Muslim’s legally entering Islam by having said the Profession of Faith (Shahada) is an absolute certainty. No one can thereafter be considered a kafir without an equal certainty, since the Prophet condemned Usama for doing so. The Imams of fiqh have specified just how much certainty is needed in texts like the following, which, though taken from the Hanafi school, is typical of the caution observed by the ulema of all schools, and shows how far the loose accusations of kufr echoing back and forth on the Islamic scene today are from the standards of Islamic law. Imam ‘Ala’ al-Din ‘Abidin writes:

The most grievous of offences and heinous of enormities is associating others with Allah Most High (shirk), or disbelief in Him, or in that which has been conveyed by our liegelord Muhammad the Messenger of Allah (Allah Most High bless him and give him peace), or sarcasm about anything thereof, may Allah be our refuge from that. “Disbelief” includes:

(1) reviling the religion of Islam, or Allah Most High, or the Prophet (Allah Most High bless him and give him peace);

(2) denying any matter necessarily known to be of the religion of Islam, that is established by a text from either the Holy Qur’an or mutawatir[4] hadith, provided the text is incontestable as evidence[5] and there is no pretext (shubha) for disagreement about it;[6]

(3) denying any matter established by unanimous consensus of all the prophetic Companions (Sahaba), provided it its unanimity is unquestionably established, and it was explicitly stated by all, not merely tacitly agreed to;

(4) denying the existence of Allah Most High;

(5) believing that things cause effects through themselves or by their nature, without the will of Allah Most High;

(6) denying a matter of unquestionable scholarly consensus (ijma‘ qat‘i);

(7) denying the existence of the angels, the jinn, or the heavens;

(8) believing something intrinsically unlawful whose its unlawfulness is unquestionably established, such as drinking wine, to be lawful (halal)—as opposed to [something not intrinsically unlawful, such as] the property of another [which is not unlawful in itself], for it is unlawful for an extrinsic reason [namely, the other’s ownership of it];

(9) sarcasm about any ruling of Sacred Law,[7] or quoting a statement of unbelief—even jokingly, without believing it—when one’s intention is sarcasm [about religious matters];

(10) demeaning any prophet, or saying that prophethood is acquired [by spiritual works];

(11) calumny against ‘A’isha the wife of the Prophet (Allah Most High bless him and give him peace);

(12) or denying that the Prophet’s message (Allah Most High bless him and give him peace) was intended for the entire world

—in any of which cases a man is an apostate, and must be asked to re-enter Islam, which he can either do or else be killed, though a woman is merely incarcerated (al-Hadiyya al-‘Ala’iyya, 424–25).

These legal criteria, with the foregoing parts of this essay, reveal a number of fallacies in the reckless charges of unbelief bandied about in our times, providing even stronger reason for Muslims to avoid them and the groups enamored with them. Let us now look more closely at three examples of fallacies of takfir all too common in the present day: (1) the fallacy of hearsay evidence, (2) the fallacy of imputed intentionality, and (3) the fallacy of guilt by association.

The Fallacy of Hearsay Evidence

Accepting hearsay evidence against people is forbidden by Allah Most High, who says,

“O you who believe: when a corrupt person brings you news, verify it, lest you harm people out of ignorance and come to regret what you have done” (Qur’an 49:6).

The Qur’anic scholar Sulayman al-Jamal notes that this does not merely apply to those who are corrupt, but rather Allah calls such a person corrupt in the above verse “to repel and shock people from jumping to conclusions without checking” (al-Futuhat al-ilahiyya, 4.178).

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “It is lying enough for a man to repeat everything he hears” (Muslim, 1.10: 5. S), because as Imam Nawawi observes, “one generally hears both truth and falsehood, and to repeat everything one hears without checking will necessarily mean telling lies” (Sharh Sahih Muslim, 1.75).

Those familiar with testimony in court know how frequently even well-intentioned eyewitnesses contradict each other and, upon cross-examination, themselves. In the world in which we live, not everyone is well-intentioned, especially towards those who are envied for their accomplishments or possessions. “Spin,” the new polite phrase for lying innuendo, is a fact of media politics. Reporters sometimes get things wrong, eliminate nuances that indicate the context, or misunderstand the person they interview to improve the story line or reader interest, or to make things “fit” with received ideas. Love and hate still sell news. Daily printing deadlines by their very nature often prevent a thorough checking of facts. If we think about it, much of our everyday knowledge is acquired with considerably less than the verification demanded by Islam. When we hear something, or read it from a single source, we tend to accept such knowledge because it usually works.

It does not work for judging a Muslim. Sacred Law stipulates that to establish that someone has left Islam, there must be at least two male witnesses who testify that they have heard him make a statement of unbelief (Radd al-muhtar, 4.371). Though the ruling cited is from the Hanafi school, the other schools of jurisprudence similarly stipulate testimony from witnesses. Moreover, if the individual then denies that he has made such a statement, he is legally considered as having repented of it (Mukhtasar al-Tahawi, 259).

As for judging the belief or unbelief of a particular historical individual of the past who ostensibly died as a Muslim, it is no one’s responsibility, since the dead no longer stand in our dock. As previously noted, such judgements are only given by the qadi in view of this-worldly rulings and consequences, which are immaterial to those now remanded by death to a higher court.

However, when a physical individual is gone, his “historical person” remains in the form of his written works, and it is this that ulema sometimes warn Muslims about when they mention “the kufr of So-and-so,” intending not his person, but the historical personality that his written legacy has effectively become.

This is legally quite a different thing from judging the author himself. Why? Because whoever surveys something of the vast corpus of Islamic manuscripts extant realizes how many works, even some of more important, are without rigorous authentication from their authors. Though a few manuscripts are autographed, or have been related by multiple channels from the author by students, or have ijazas that attest to a checked and contiguous transmission, perhaps as many as 75 percent do not, according to our teacher in hadith Sheikh Shu‘ayb al-Arna’ut, who has made his living for the last more than forty years readying such manuscripts for print. Even manuscripts optimistically labelled by indexers as “in the author’s own handwriting” or “transcribed under the supervision of the author” sometimes turn out to be otherwise. Oftener, a judgement in print that a particular work has reached us through several copyists’ hands in the form its author originally intended it represents the probabilistic expectation of the editor after collating the oldest and best manuscripts available to him. The point is that if ulema throughout Islamic history have agreed that this should not prevent Muslims from reading and benefiting from such books, they also tell us that written works that have reached us through copyists are leagues apart from the kind of forensic evidence demanded by Islamic law for judgements about a particular Muslim’s belief or unbelief.

Aside from honest mistakes, there are intentional forgeries. Faction welcomes perfidy, and at the personal level, envy is fact of life: the many prohibitions in the Qur’an and sunna against it attest to its presence in human nature, and that if not overcome by religious motives at its onset, it can burgeon into an obsession that will stop at nothing to destroy the person envied. Thus historically we find that the greater numbers of followers of Sufi sheikhs in comparison to other ulema sometimes engendered the most egregious means of redress in the latter’s camp. In an Islamic milieu where orthodoxy was highly valued, interpolations of heretical beliefs or immoral statements into hand-copied books easily lent themselves to the ends of malice.

For example, after mentioning a warning by the Supreme Ottoman Sultanate against reading Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Fusus al-hikam [The gem-settings of the wisdoms] which said spurious interpolations had been added into it by enemies of Islam, Hanafi Imam Ibn ‘Abidin says that this also

happened to the Knower of Allah [‘Abd al-Wahhab] al-Sha‘rani, against whom envious people forged calumnies of kufr that they inserted into some of his works, which they published as his. Whereupon the ulema of the day met, and he produced his own copy of the book which had been signed by scholars[8] and proved to be free of the lies forged against him (Radd al-muhtar, 3.294).

Thus also, when the litterateur and historian Burhan al-Din al-Biqa‘i stirred up controversy among the ulema of ninth/fifteenth–century Cairo over some verses ostensibly written by the mystical poet Ibn al-Farid, the hadith master (hafidh)[9] Sakhkhawi rejoined by saying:

The poetry ascribed to him has not reached me through any rigorously authenticated chain of transmission, and we do not declare the unbelief of anyone on the basis of something merely possible, especially when there is no benefit in judging him an unbeliever, for the sole benefit lies in making people shun the words themselves (Maqalat al-Kawthari, 340).

“Making people shun the words themselves” was also the reason for Imam Dhahabi’s warning readers in Zaghal al-‘ilm [The counterfeiting of Sacred Knowledge], in his chapter on usul al-din or “the bases of religion,” of the example of his former sheikh Ibn Taymiya, cautioning students against losing their way in the mazes of philosophical and cosmological arguments of the ancients,[10] as he felt Ibn Taymiya had at the end of his life. He tells anyone who imagines that studying such arguments and refuting them is a necessary part of an Islamic education:

I do not think you have reached the rank of Ibn Taymiya therein, or by Allah, even approach it, yet you saw what happened to him: the attacks on him, people leaving him, and his being called misguided, a kafir, and a liar—rightly and wrongly—while, before he got into this field, he was illumined and enlightened, and bore the mark of the early Muslims on his face; whereafter most people felt that he grew dark and eclipsed, and a shadow fell upon him; becoming in the eyes of his enemies a liar, impostor, and unbeliever; in the eyes of the intelligent and fair-minded an inaugurator of blameworthy innovations (mubtadi‘) in religion, though personally virtuous, painstaking, and skilled; and in the eyes of the majority of his low-bred followers the ‘standard-bearer of Islam’ and ‘defender of the faith.’ I can tell this as a fact” (Zaghal al-‘ilm, 42–43).

Imam Dhahabi’s aim in saying this was to caution upcoming ulema against delving in the kind of philosophical speculation through which Ibn Taymiya became “an inaugurator of blameworthy innovations” and “called misguided, a kafir, and a liar—rightly and wrongly.” Dhahabi did not to thereby intend to make a judgement against him, for he acknowledges his good traits, but rather to warn others to take admonition from the example of a good scholar who went wrong through studying and writing about something Dhahabi deemed worse than useless.

In this, Imam Dhahabi was like other ulema who mention the “misguidance” or “unbelief” of past Islamic figures. They are judging words and positions, not the people who may (or may not) have said or held them. For no scholar would presume to transgress the limits of the Qur’an and sunna that prohibit any accusation, let alone that of kufr, on mere hearsay. Those in our day who make takfir of Muslims of previous times commit the “fallacy of hearsay evidence” by ignoring both the forensic standards of Islam and the whole legal purpose of a formal judgement of apostasy, which as we have seen is temporal and this-worldly.

We have not mentioned the comparatively recent phenomenon of printed books whose contents are established by copyrights as the work of a particular author in archives such as the Library of Congress or the British Library. For such works, the thoroughness of documentation suggests that authors bear full legal responsibility for what is in them. But it should be noted that if there is any statement in an author’s printed work that seems to be kufr, it must be plainly expressed, not merely implied, for otherwise the accuser has committed another fallacy, to which we now turn.

The Fallacy of Imputed Intentionality

Words are judged by what the speaker intends, not necessarily what the hearer apprehends. If an utterance is unambiguous and its context plain, there is normally only one possible intention. But according to the Hanafi school, if a statement may conceivably be intended in either of two ways, one valid, the other unbelief (kufr), it cannot be the basis for a fatwa of the kufr of the person who said it. In the words of Imam Haskafi in his al-Durr al-mukhtar,

A fatwa may not be given of the unbelief of a Muslim whose words are interpretable as having a valid meaning, or about the unbelief of which there is a difference of scholarly opinion, even if weak (Radd al-muhtar, 3.289).

Only when the intention entails kufr do such words take the speaker out of Islam. Context is of the utmost importance in determining this intention, and taking someone’s words out of context is universally considered dishonest, doing violence to their intended meaning. The Qur’an itself, for example, is filled with verses quoting kafirs denying Allah and His messengers (upon whom be peace), yet reciting such verses is certainly not kufr, unless it is accompanied with the intention of unbelief.

The need to contextualize words to establish their intent is even more imperative in possible utterances of kufr that insult Allah Most High or the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). Something might be said that while outwardly offensive to Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), was nevertheless intended by the speaker to make a valid point, not as an insult.

Intentional and Unintentional Insult

To deliberately insult Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) is unquestionably kufr, as borne out by Qur’anic verses such as the word of Allah in Sura al-Ahzab

Those who offend Allah and His messenger are cursed by Allah in this world and the next, and He has prepared for them a humiliating chastisement (Qur’an 33:57);

in which the word adha or “offend” means to hurt, vex, or bother someone in a way generally short of causing them outright harm; while the certainty of a humiliating chastisement in this world and the next pertains only to unbelievers, as mentioned in Sura al-Tawba:

A painful torment awaits those who offend the Messenger of Allah. They swear to you by Allah, to please you, though Allah and His messenger are fitter for them to please, if they are believers. Do they not know that the fire of hell awaits whoever opposes Allah and His messenger, dwelling therein forever? That is the great humiliation (Qur’an 9:61–63).

The latter verse shows that offending the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) amounts to opposing Allah and His messenger, which is without question unbelief

“Offending” however—as the mujtahid Imam and hadith master (hafidh)[11] Taqi al-Din al-Subki says in his al-Sayf al-maslul, a more than five-hundred-page work on the legal consequences of insulting the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)—may be either intentional or unintentional, while only if a person intends giving offense to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has he thereby committed kufr:

One must be aware of this rule, giving due consideration to the intention behind the offense (adha). For a person might do or say something which offends another that he did not have the slightest intention to offend him by, but rather intended something else, not thinking that it might give offense to the other, or understanding it would necessarily do so. Such cases do not entail the legal consequences of “giving offense”. . . .

This is proven by the word of Allah Most High about those who sat [too long] at the marriage feast of Zaynab [and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)]

“O you who believe, do not enter the dwellings of the Prophet unless you are given leave to partake of the food, not waiting for it to be prepared, but rather enter when given permission, and leave when finished eating; not [lingering because of] enjoying conversation; truly, you offended (adha) the Prophet thereby” (Qur’an 33:53).

These were the greatest of the Companions, who did not mean to give offense (adha) by doing this, so it did not entail its legal consequences (al-Sayf al-maslul (c00), 135).

The “fallacy of imputed intentionality” in such cases means to assume without decisive proof that an offensive deed or utterance was deliberately intended to offend Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) and hence legally kufr. Imam Subki’s restriction of unbelief to cases of deliberate offense is attested to not only by the Qur’an, but by many rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadiths. Anas ibn Malik (Allah be well pleased with him) said:

I was walking along with the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), who was wearing a cape from Najran with a thick edge, when a desert Arab caught up with him and pulled him so hard that I looked at the side of his neck and saw the mark on it from the violence of pulling the cape’s edge. The man said, “Order that I be given some of the wealth of Allah which you have!” The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) looked at him and laughed, then ordered he be given to” (Bukhari, 4.115: 3149).

Though the bedouin inflicted palpable physical pain on the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), it was without legal consequence because he apparently only meant to stop the Prophet to talk with him. Anas also relates:

When Allah gave His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) the spoils from Hawazin, and he began giving a hundred camels each to certain [noble] men of the Quraysh [so that others like them might desire to enter Islam]. Certain people of the Medinan Helpers (Ansar) then said of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), “May Allah forgive the Messenger of Allah. He gives to Quraysh and neglects us, while our swords still drip with their blood.”

The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) was told what they said, and he sent for the Helpers and gathered them together in a leather tent, with no one else there. When they had assembled, the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) came and asked, “What is this that I hear you have said?” The wisest replied: “Those of us whose opinion matters, O Messenger of Allah, have said nothing. As for some men of us whose teeth are new [the young], they have said: “Allah forgive the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace). He gives to Quraysh and neglects the Helpers, while our swords still drip with their blood.”

The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “Verily, I am giving gifts to men who are but newly come from unbelief. Are you not satisfied that others should get property, while you return to your saddles with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace)? By Allah, what you are getting is better than what they are.” They answered, “We are well satisfied, O Messenger of Allah.” He told them, “Truly, when I am gone, you shall see rank favoritism; but have patience until you meet Allah and His messenger at the Watering Place.” Anas commented: “However we did not” (Bukhari, 4.114: 3147).

In this hadith, some of the Medinan Helpers spoke words as offensive to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) as any could be, entailing that he needed to be forgiven by Allah for wronging those who had fought in jihad by unjustly favoring his own people. Yet, because they did not intend to thereby insult or demean him—for their words rather proceeded from natural human distress at being left out while others took the spoils—the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not charge them with unbelief or even with sin, as would have been obligatory if it had been. He merely told them why he did what he did, and of the eternal reward they would receive. The insult and offense offered thereby to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was plain, but without legal consequences because it was unintentional.

Another example of the same ruling is found in the hadith of ‘A’isha (Allah be well pleased with her), who said:

I became jealous of the women who offered themselves to the Messenger of Allah and said, “Does a woman offer herself?” And when Allah Most High revealed:

Postpone [the daily turn of] whomever you will of them [your wives], and draw near to you whomever you will; Whoever you wish [to return to their original turn], of anyone you have set aside, it is no reproach against you[12] (Qur’an 33:51),

I said, “I don’t see but that your Lord rushes to fulfill your own whims” (Bukhari, 6:147: 4788).

This last, admittedly jealous, remark was a reproach against her husband, the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), but here too, because it was a mere emotional protest that lacked the explicit intention to demean or offend him, it entailed no legal consequences. There are many similar examples of unintended offense in the sunna. One of the most telling of them is in the hadith of Muslim

Truly, Allah rejoices more at the repentance of a servant when he repents to Him than one of you would if riding his camel through a wasteland, and it wandered off, carrying away his food and water, and he despaired of ever getting it back; so he came to a tree and lay down in its shade, without hope of ever seeing his camel again; then, while lying there, suddenly finds it beside him and seizes its reins, so overjoyed that he cries, “O Allah, You are my slave, and I am Your lord”—making a mistake out of sheer happiness (Muslim, 4.2104–5: 2747).

It is difficult to think of an utterance more blasphemous or offensive to Allah than the latter, had it been intentional. But since it was not, the principle of Imam Subki necessarily applies that the person who says such an expression without intending to revile Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) cannot be judged an unbeliever.

The Barelwi-Deobandi Conflict on the Indian Subcontinent

Knowledge of the above principle could have probably prevented much of the “fatwa wars” that took place around the turn of the last century in India between Hanafi Muslims of the Barelwi and Deobandi schools. They culminated in a number of fatwas published by Ahmad Reza Khan Barelwi (d. 1340/1921) of the takfir of major Deobandi ulema of his times such as Muhammad Qasim Nanotwi (d.1297/1879), Rashid Ahmad Gangohi[13] (d. 1323/1905), Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri[14] (d. 1346/1927), Ashraf Ali Thanwi (d. 1362/1943), and indeed, of anyone who did not consider them kafirs—fatwas which have cast their long shadows down to our own times. In comparison, no Deobandi scholar of note, to the author’s knowledge, has yet made takfir of Barelwis.

Now, any issue that has been debated back and forth between two parties of Islamic scholars, both of whom know the Qur’an and hadith, Hanafi jurisprudence, and the ‘aqida of Islam, is by that very fact not a central religious principle that is “necessarily known to be of the religion of Islam,” but rather can only be something peripheral that is “disagreed upon by ulema.” As such, it cannot be the criterion for anyone’s kufr or iman. Among the evidence for this, as previously noted, is that Allah has commanded us to “ask those who know well, if you know not” (Qur’an 16:43), and the position of Muslim orthodoxy is that no Muslim will go to hell for following what the ulema, “those who know well,” tell him to do in such a case, even in a matter upon which scholars differ. Despite the acrimonious charges and countercharges, an unbiased look at the polemical literature of the Barelwis and Deobandis bears out its essentially peripheral nature in three ways:

First, the fiqh differences between them, mostly about the acceptability or unacceptability of certain practices of folk Islam in the Indian subcontinent, do not concern matters of belief to begin with. I hope to clarify the mistake of thinking that such differences do so in an essay I intend to write in the future, Allah willing, on “the fallacy of considering ijtihad as ‘aqida.”

Second, none of the six main ‘aqida issues fought over by Barelwis and Deobandis are central enough to be “necessarily known of the religion,” as shall appear from the short description of them that follows.

Third, the only substantive pretext for takfir between them is an issue that illustrates the “fallacy of imputed intentionality” we are expounding here, namely the charge of Ahmad Reza Khan Barelwi in his Husam al-Haramayn and al-Fatawa al-Rizawiyya that the Deobandi writers Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri and Ashraf Ali Thanwi committed kufr by insulting the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). After a brief glance at the six main ‘aqida issues in the following section, which may be skipped for brevity, we shall return in the section after it, “The Imputed Insult,” to the remarks of these two scholars in context, and show how Imam Subki’s distinction between intentional and unintentional offense offers a compelling Islamic legal solution to a debate that has become a social problem.

The Six Disputed ‘Aqida Issues

Issues that one cannot consider a Muslim to be a kafir for affirming or denying include all the main ‘aqida-related questions disagreed upon by Barelwis and Deobandis, the most debated of which are the following:

(1) How much knowledge of the unseen (‘ilm al-ghayb) did Allah bestow upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) before his death? For example, Hudhayfa (Allah be well pleased with him) relates:

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) delivered an address to us in which he did not omit a single thing until the Last Hour without mentioning it.[15] Whoever knew it [by remembering it afterwards] would know, and whoever did not would not. Truly, I would see something I had forgotten [that he had said] and then remember it, as someone recalls something he has not seen for a while, but then sees and remembers (Bukhari, 8.154: 6604).

Even though Allah directed the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in the Qur’an to say:

“I am only a human being like any of you, who is divinely inspired that your God is but One God” (Qur’an 18:110),

no one ever again received the divine prophetic wahy or “inspiration” that he did. There is little comparison between any other man’s knowledge of the unseen and that of someone who could relate everything that was going to happen until the end of the world and “not omit a single thing,” even if he was “only a human being like any of you.” The Barelwis hold the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was given incomparably vast knowledge of the unseen, while the Deobandis say he had only limitary knowledge of it.

(2) Does Allah show everything that happens in this world to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in the barzakh or “interworld” between this life and the Judgement Day, such that he is as though hadir or “present” and nadhir or “watching” all we do? Ibn Mas‘ud (Allah be well pleased with him) relates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,

“My life is better for you, for you bring up new matters, and we speak to you [about them]; and my death is better for you, for your works shall be shown to me, the good ones of which I see I shall praise Allah for, while the bad ones I see I shall ask Allah Most High to forgive you for” (Musnad al-Bazzar (c00), 5.308–9: 1925).[16]

For any of us, being present and beholding something are merely conventional means (asbab ‘adiyya) by which Allah brings about their usual effect: awareness of what is happening. He could also bring about this effect in anyone, alive or dead, without such means, solely through His omnipotent power. The above hadith shows that He has chosen to do so for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) after his death, “for your works shall be shown to me,” who is therefore effectually as though present (hadir) and watching (nadhir) our actions. Thus the Barelwis affirm, though Deobandis deny this formulation, which they say makes the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) as though omnipresent and omniscient.

(3) Allah made the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) the most influential human being who ever lived. To obey him was to obey Allah, Master of the entire universe, and to disobey him was to disobey Allah. By creating paradise and hell and revealing the religion of Islam, Allah made the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) the gateway for all time to the greatest part of human existence. Alongside this momentous effect upon every human being’s destiny, and with the inimitable miracles (mu‘jizat) vouchsafed to him in this life, the answering of his prayers, and his being the dearest of creation to God—it can be asked: What else did Allah place at his disposal in this world? Was he someone for whom Allah effected anything he chose (mukhtar al-kull)? The Barelwis believed so, adducing that the Prophet’s will (Allah bless him and give him peace) though created by Allah and without any causal effect in and of itself, was in conformity with Allah’s will in every particular; while Deobandis say that it is unbelief to affirm that Allah has granted complete control over creation to anyone besides Himself.

(4) It is rigorously authenticated in Bukhari and Muslim that on Judgement Day the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) shall be granted supreme intercession with Allah for all believing mankind; indeed, seeking this intercession in the afterlife is recommended by the sunna.[17] The question arises: Does the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) also intercede for matters prior to the Judgement Day? Barelwis say that his intercession (Allah bless him and give him peace) is for both this world and the next, so one should ask for both. Some Deobandis agree, while others aver that his intercession, now that he is dead, shall only occur in the next world; and still others say that it is blameworthy to ask for his intercession or help in this world.[18]

Two more ‘aqida-related questions remain to be mentioned, and to understand them, we have to return for a moment to a previously made distinction from the “Letter to ‘Abd al-Matin.”[19]

There we said, first, that Allah’s omnipotent power (qudra) only relates to what is “intrinsically possible” (ja’iz dhati), meaning possible in itself, not logically absurd or self-contradictory. It is sometimes termed the “hypothetically possible” (ja’iz ‘aqli) in view of the fact that it refers to anything that can in principle exist.

Second, Allah’s omnipotent power does not relate to what is “intrinsically impossible” (mustahil dhati), meaning something logically absurd or self-contradictory, such as “creating a square circle” or “a round triangle,” for these are mere jumbles of words that do not mean anything that can possibly exist.

Third, we saw that there is also another class of the impossible, namely things which, while not impossible in themselves (mustahil dhati), become impossible because of Allah’s eternal decision that they are not to be, such as the iman of Abu Lahab, which is negated by Sura al-Masad in the Qur’an. Though intrinsically possible in themselves, such things are termed “contingently impossible” (mustahil ‘aradi), since their impossibility is due to the contingency of Allah’s deciding that they shall never exist, and informing us so in revelation.

These distinctions are necessary because they directly enter into two of the most heated issues debated by Barelwis and Deobandis.

(5) The first is: Is it possible for Allah to lie? Here, both Barelwis and Deobandis, and indeed all Muslims, agree that Allah never lies, while the only disagreement is whether (a) this is intrinsically impossible (mustahil dhati), or whether (b) this is not intrinsically impossible, but only contingently impossible (mustahil ‘aradi), that is, because of His own decision and knowledge that He never lies, which He has informed us of by saying, “His word is the truth” (Qur’an 6:73), and many other Qur’anic verses.

Rashid Ahmad Gangohi of the Deobandis seems to have held the latter position, that while a lie told by God is hypothetically possible (ja’iz ‘aqli) in the very limited sense of not being intrinsically impossible (mustahil dhati),[20] it is nevertheless contingently impossible, since He has informed us of His truthfulness in the Qur’an.

Unfortunately for Muslim unity in India, Gangohi’s concept of the jawaz ‘aqli or “hypothetical possibility” of God’s lying was mistakenly translated into Arabic by Ahmad Reza Khan as imkan al-kadhib, which in Arabic means the “factual possibility of [God’s] lying” (Husam al-Haramayn (c00), 19)—a position that neither Rashid Ahmad Gangohi nor any other Muslim holds, for it is unbelief.[21]

Whether this mistranslation was due to Ahmad Reza Khan’s honest misapprehension of Gangohi’s position, or directly carrying into Arabic a similar Urdu phrase without understanding the resultant nuance in Arabic, or some other reason, is not clear. But it is plain that to Ahmad Reza, it seemed to amount to a denial of the basic Muslim belief that Allah never lies, something no Muslim denies, nor did Gangohi, if one but reflects for a moment upon what the above distinction entails.

This mistaken construing of Gangohi’s position in turn became the basis for Ahmad Reza’s declaring that Gangohi was a kafir, nicknaming those who subscribed with him to this view Wahhabiyya Kadhdhabiyya or “Liar Wahhabis,” and giving the tragic fatwa that all who did not consider Gangohi to be a kafir themselves became kafir.

Muslims can rest easy about this fatwa because it is simply mistaken. The fatwa’s deductions are wrong because its premises are based on inaccurate observation and inattention to needful logical distinctions that exculpate Gangohi from the charge of kufr—even if we do not accept the latter’s conclusions. So while Ahmad Reza should be regarded as sincere in his convictions, in his own eyes defending the religion of Islam, and morally blameless, he did get his facts wrong, and it is clearly inadmissible for Muslims to follow him in his mistake, even if made out of sincerity.

(6) The final issue, which can be analyzed according to similar considerations, is the question of whether Allah can create another like the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). Though hypothetically possible (ja’iz ‘aqli), for example, if Allah were to create a second universe precisely like ours in every particular; it is contingently and effectively impossible (mustahil ‘aradi), because the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the Seal of the Prophets, whom Allah has determined that there shall be no prophet (nabi) after, or any prophetic messenger (rasul). Allah says:

“Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets” (Qur’an 33:40),

where the word khatim or “seal” in Arabic, when annexed (mudaf) to a series, as in the expression “Seal of the Prophets,” can only mean the final member of that series through which it is complete and after which nothing may be added. This is the only possible lexical sense of the word in the context. Were there any doubt about this, it is also unanimously agreed upon by scholarly consensus (ijma‘), and explicitly stated by the Prophet himself (Allah bless him and give him peace) in many rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadiths, such as that in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad

Prophetic messengerhood (risala) and prophethood (nubuwwa) have ceased: there shall be no messenger after me, nor any prophet (Ahmad (c00), 3.267: 13824).

The hadith master (hafidh) Ibn Kathir says that corroboratory versions of this hadith are, like the Qur’an itself, mutawatir or related through so many intersubstantiative and rigorously authenticated channels of transmission that they are incontestable (Tafsir al-Qur’an (c00), 6.2823).

Here, as in the preceding question, both Barelwis and Deobandis agree about the actual result—that no one like the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) shall ever be created again—and that to believe otherwise is infidelity (kufr). For even though the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is merely a contingent and created human being, whom it is hypothetically possible (ja’iz ‘aqli) that Allah could create others exactly like, it is contingently impossible (mustahil ‘aradi) that Allah should do so, since He has informed us in the Qur’an and mutawatir sunna that no more prophets or messengers shall ever be created. And a duplicate of the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) who was like him in everything except prophethood would not in any meaningful sense be “like” him at all.

So those who say, as did some of the Deobandis, that Allah’s creating a “like” is hypothetically possible,[22] are correct, in the very limited sense that it is logically within Allah’s almighty power to do so—had He not already decided and declared that He never shall. And those who say, like the Barelwis, that this is effectively and contingently impossible, are also right, for Allah has decided that no one like the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) shall ever be again. Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the final prophet and messenger according to the Qur’an, scholarly consensus (ijma‘), and his own words “there shall be no messenger after me, nor any prophet.”

In any case, it is plain from the logical distinction just described that here too, the disagreement between Barelwis and Deobandis is about something that does not affect the kufr or iman of either, and that those who say otherwise are simply mistaken.

The point of mentioning these six questions is that not one of them is a genuine ‘aqida issue, in the sense of being a central tenet of faith that no one can disagree about and remain a believer. Rather, all of the main ‘aqida-related issues the Barelwis and Deobandis disagree about can be legitimately debated and differed upon by Muslims without either side having left Islam.

As previously noted, this applies with even greater force to fiqh issues differed upon by Barelwis and Deobandis, such as Milad celebrations of the birthday of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), the definition of bid‘a or “reprehensible innovation,” or the practice of setting aside particular days to send the reward of spiritual works to the souls of the departed. Imam Ghazali, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi, and other scholars have noted that things whose blameworthiness Imams of fiqh disagree about are not permissible to condemn, since it is a condition for something to be considered munkar or “condemnable” that this be concurred upon by all, not merely established through ijtihad of one scholar rather than another.

Because the foregoing questions in both ‘aqida and fiqh may be legitimately disagreed upon by Islamic scholars, only one issue remains that offers either side a pretext for takfir; namely, whether some words written by Deobandi scholars constitute insulting the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) or not.

The Imputed Insult

To understand what was said, and what was meant, one has to look at the context, which was various Deobandi scholars’ rebuttals of Ahmad Reza Khan’s belief in the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) incomparably vast knowledge of the unseen. This seemed to the Deobandis to blur the distinction between Allah’s knowledge and human knowledge; or more specifically, between the knowledge of the absolute unseen and the relative unseen.

The absolute unseen (al-ghayb al-mutlaq) is that which no one knows but Allah, such as when the Final Hour will come, or the knowledge of every particular of being, unobscured by limitations of past or future, this world or the next, time or space, or the other cognitive categories that limit and structure human perception of reality.

The relative unseen (al-ghayb al-nisbi) is a fact of everyday life, and is merely that each individual knows things others are unaware of, hence “unseen” in relation to them.

Certain Deobandi ulema felt that Ahmad Reza Khan wanted to say that the Prophet’s knowledge (Allah bless him and give him peace) went beyond the relative unseen, that the Prophet knew the particulars (juz’iyyat) of all being, as only Allah does. They regarded this as tantamount to associating others with Allah (shirk) and a grave innovation (bid‘a). Their response was strident and hyperbolic, comparing the knowledge of Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) to that of various lower creatures in a way that probably no Muslim had ever compared him before, and giving the offense whose kufr or iman we are discussing in this section.

Before presenting what they said in detail, let us cast a glance at Ahmad Reza Khan’s prophetology. What were their utterances an answer to? Did Ahmad Reza actually ascribe Allah’s knowledge to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), inaugurating a bid‘a that nothing but such retorts could extinguish?

Ahmad Reza and the Prophet’s Knowledge of the Unseen

There is no doubt that Allah vouchsafed His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) a great deal of knowledge of what was unseen in relation to the rest of mankind. We have mentioned the above hadith of Bukhari that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told the Companions everything of consequence that would happen until the end of time. Despite which, there are many Qur’anic verses that show that no one but Allah knows certain things, not even the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), such as:

“No one knows the hosts of your Lord but He” (Qur’an 74:31),

and

“No soul knows what it shall earn tomorrow, and no soul knows in what land it shall die” (Qur’an 31:34),

and

“They ask you about the Final Hour, when it shall take place. Say: Only my Lord has knowledge of it: no one shall reveal it in its time but He. It weighs heavily on the heavens and earth; it shall not come upon you, but of a sudden. They ask you as if you knew all about it. Say: Its knowledge is only with Allah, but most people know not. Say: I am not able to either benefit or harm myself, except as Allah wills. If I had had knowledge of the unseen, I would have had great good from it, and no harm touched me. I am naught but a warner and a bearer of good tidings to people who believe” (Qur’an 7:187–88).

There are many similar Qur’anic verses, all of which Ahmad Reza Khan interpreted as referring to the earlier life of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), before Allah bestowed on him greater knowledge, until, in the final years of his life, Allah disclosed to him everything that was and everything that will be until Judgement Day. By this interpretation Ahmad Reza was able to reach an accord between verses like those above, and the hadiths which mention the Prophet’s vast knowledge of the unseen (Allah bless him and give him peace). There is, for example, a rigorously authenticated hadith related by Tirmidhi that Mu‘adh ibn Jabal (Allah be well pleased with him) said:

One morning the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was kept back from us, and he delayed the dawn prayer until we could almost see the sun, when he came out in a hurry and commenced the prayer. The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) performed it quickly, and when he had closed with Salams, called out, “Stay as you are, in your rows.” He then turned to us and said, “I shall now tell you what kept me from you this morning. I rose last night, made ablution, prayed what had been destined for me to pray, but then became so drowsy in my prayer that lassitude overcame me. And lo, I was with my Lord, Blessed and Exalted, in a surpassingly beautiful form,[23] and He s