How do you know the Murjiah???

 

* There are many types of Murji'ah: Ashaa'irah, Karraamiyyah, Murji'atul Fuqahaa etc. We can recognise them when they say that the action is not a pillar of the Imaan, that it is just extra condition, (i.e. the kamal of it) and when they say that there is no Kufr except when combined with Juhoud in the heart or Istihlal in the heart. That is why the Murji’ah have a problem with the chapters of Apostasy of the books of the Ulemaa of the salaf. Because they say that we can never know who the Murtad is.

* How do you know the Murjiah? They misunderstand certain things, their 'scholars' have certain confusing ways of quoting things, and they take Ahadith out of context, take evidences out of context. However, there are two ways to deal with the Murji'ah. If you want to expose the Murji’ah, you want to follow the evidences that they use, you will find that they do not use the entire ayah or Hadith, or they will take it out of context, or sometimes they will make judgement before they finish the Hadith or without to check other Ahadith. If they find other Ahadith that contradict them then they will not combine or outweigh between the Ahadith, rather they will accuse the other Hadith or they will hide it.

* How do you know the Murjiah? They always refer to Da’eef or mawdou' Hadith. That is because they never check Hadith, the ash'aris and maturidis do not check Ahadith and are not good at it at all. Some of them even say that they will take weak Ahadith or even fabricated Ahadith if it praises the Prophet (saws), or that they take the weak Hadith in fadaa'il ul a'mal, and yet they will ignore the Saheeh Hadith if it disagrees with their madhhab.

* How do you know the Murjiah? Sometimes the Murji’ah refer to a Hadith and will generalise it to everything, e.g. to say, the prophet (saw) said, "do not harm yourself ..." so “therefore you must vote otherwise you will harm yourself”! “Send children to Kufr school otherwise you will harm yourself”

* How do you know the Murjiah? The Murji’ah will take a part of the Shari’ah without to attribute it to the general principle, they go to the fari' and leave the Asl. They do not know how to attribute the branch to the root.

* How do you know the Murjiah? They distort the evidences and change the meaning; they always try to apply evidences to a reality that never existed. They do not verify the reality of the evidences; they do not trace the old reality nor verify the current reality. They will simply distort any ayah to suit them, e.g. they will quote "fulfill your contracts" and then say “therefore mortgages are allowed.” They take it out of its manaat. However Usuli scholars from Ahl Al Sunnah Wal Jama'ah always check the reality.

* How do you know the Murjiah? They refer to Imaan as Tasdiq, but it is not so, the opposite of Imaan is Kufr, while the opposite of Tasdiq is Takdhib. They are not the same, Imam Shafi'i said,

"Imaan is ismun Shari'i (divine noun)."

The legislator used it to refer to a particular thing, which is:

"The totality of the sayings and actions that you believe in."

It is not a man-made name, it is the sayings, the actions and the convictions, we should know that if the Shari’ah defines a term, we do not follow the linguistic meaning and it is not allowed to go to the linguistic meaning unless we have no Shari’i meaning; so when they define the Imaan as Tasdiq, that is completely nonsense! Because the revelation mentioned it to indicate the totality of the sayings and actions that we believe in.

We need to study all the terms that the Qur'an mentions, e.g. the Zakat in Arabic means ‘investment’, but we cannot say that Zakat is investment, because it has a divine meaning in the Shari’ah with a particular nisaab, it has conditions and preventions, it has to be calculated in a particular way and paid to certain people, it is Ismun Shari’i.

Similarly the Imaan was mentioned in the Qur'an, we cannot just go to the linguistic meaning. If we try to understand those terms linguistically, we will never do so. Firstly, because we will never have the same level of Arabic as the Sahabah and secondly because the Qur'an is not only another Arabic book. When we look to all the terms of the Qur'an, we must look to what it means, what are the circumstances of the revelation, the time, the place; we have to look to the understanding of the Sahabah. It is not the case we just go to all the linguistic people to find out what it all means, because we have the Shari’ah meaning.

The problem is that people go to the linguistic meaning and leave the Shari’ah meaning and that is why when we study Usul ul Fiqh, we always study both meanings. If the meaning is not found in the Shari'ah, then we will go to the linguistic meaning because the Qur'an happens to be in the Arabic language.

But we must restrict ourselves to the understanding of Al Salaf Al Saalih, who believed that,

"Imaan is a Shari’i name used by the legislator to indicate a particular thing, it combines the totality of the sayings and actions and the conviction..." [Kitab ul Imaan for ibn Taymiyyah]

Imam Shafi'i in Kitab ul Ilm said,

"Imaan is a Shari’ah term that indicates the sayings, actions and the conviction."

Moreover, the Imaan does not mean Tasdiq, even linguistically. If someone said a thing to you, in Arabic you will say, “I trust you,” not “I believe in you.”

The word Imaan is opposite to Kufr not like Tasdiq which is opposite of Takdhib (the lie), the one who disbelieves we say he is Kafir; we do not say he is kaadhib. Similarly the one who says a lie we do not say that he is Kafir, we say he is a liar. This is very important, when we speak about Imaan and Tasdiq, we see they have the same meaning, but when they come together they have a different meaning. Similarly Al Imaan and Al Islam, they have the same meaning when mentioned apart, but when they meet they have different meanings, i.e. when mentioned alone in separate texts they will have the same meaning but when they are mentioned in the same text, they have differing meanings. Al Islam is Al Imaan and Al Imaan is Al Islam, they are to submit to Allah inner and outer. But when they come together they have different meanings like in the Hadith about Jibreel (as), when he came to Rasulullah and asked about Islam and Imaan, they came in the same text and have different meanings. Here the Prophet (saws) spoke about Islam as the outer actions and the Imaan as the inner actions, Islam is to believe in Allah exclusively and to obey him and have Baraa from the Shirk and its people.

In the Hadith of Muslim, from Abu Huraira that the Prophet (saws) said,

"Al Imaan is 70 and some branches, the highest is to say Laa ilaaha illallah (saying) and the lowest is to remove something harmful from the road (an action) and Hayaa' is from the Imaan."

So the Imaan is sayings and actions, hidden and apparent, and the Imaan increases and decreases. Allah says,

“They will have increase in their Imaan,”

Umar narrated that when a man asked the Prophet (saws) to tell him about Islam, the prophet (saw) said,

“'Al Islam is to worship Allah without to associate with him any partners, to fast Ramadhan, to make hajj to the house ...etc” [Muslim]

All this is included, anyone that is missing it is not Muslim, and it is not called Islam unless it has all of this. So the question is which linguistic meaning of the word can bring all this meaning? Which linguist would have answered similar to the Prophet (saws) in this Hadith? So you cannot just follow the linguistic meaning of everything, you must refer to the Shari’ah exclusively.

By Ustadh Abu Waleed (hafidhUllah)