Part of Concepts of Ahl as-Sunnah (series completed)
· Lesson 350 of 1251
Summary of Sunni concepts | Concept (348) | Audio
0:000:00
Transcript
Machine translation — may contain errors
0:00
A Summary of the Concepts of Ahl al-Sunnah
0:09
Transmitted Matters of Faith (al-Sam'iyyat)
0:12
In the realm of creed, the scholastic theologians use the term *al-sam'iyyat* (transmitted matters)
0:16
to refer to what is established purely through auditory transmission,
0:18
meaning revelation and scripture,
0:19
regarding things in which human reason has no independent role—
0:21
namely, the unseen matters of faith,
0:23
such as Paradise and Hellfire,
0:25
the Balance and the Traverse (al-Sirat),
0:27
the punishment of the grave,
0:28
and so forth.
0:30
One might assume that by this assertion they agree with Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jama'ah;
0:36
however, this assumption is spoiled
0:38
by their introduction of a specific caveat,
0:40
which they make a prerequisite for every single issue among these transmitted matters,
0:45
namely their statement:
0:46
"provided that reason does not deem it impossible."
0:49
They do this to reaffirm that the ultimate arbiter in matters of creed, according to them, is human reason,
0:55
and that reason sits in judgment over the revealed texts,
0:57
rather than the text itself being the self-sufficient authority on the matter.
1:01
For this reason, when they classified the attributes of Allah Almighty under rational matters (al-'aqliyyat)—
1:05
which, in their view, are things that reason can independently comprehend—
1:09
and subsequently subjected the texts affirming Allah Almighty's attributes to their deficient intellects,
1:15
rejecting whatever conflicted with their own opinions,
1:17
they rejected the text if it was a hadith,
1:19
even if it was rigorously authentic,
1:21
on the pretext that it was an isolated (*ahad*) hadith;
1:24
and if it was a Qur'anic verse, they either allegorized it (*awwalu*) or relegated its meaning entirely (*fawwadu*).