The Science of the Principles of Religion

as a mujtahid. So if he comes to know it and yet does not loosen his imitation (taqlīd) of his imām, he has accomplished nothing; rather he has wearied himself out and has mounted the proof against his own self in certain questions.(1) And if he reads it in order to secure posts and to be talked about, then this is part of the calamity, and it is a species of derangement.

( The Science of the Principles of Religion (uṣūl al-dīn) )

This is a grand name, and it applies properly to the retaining by heart of the Book and the Sunnah, for these two, and nothing else, are the principles of the religion of Islam. As for the conventional usage of this name, it varies with the variety of the sects (al-niḥal). The principles of religion of the forebears (al-salaf) were faith in God Most High, in His books, His messengers and His angels, in His attributes and in the decree (al-qadar); and that the Qurʼān sent down is the speech of God Most High, uncreated; and the invoking of God's good pleasure upon all the Companions; and the rest of the principles of the Sunnah. The principles of religion of the latter-day men (al-khalaf) are what they have composed treatises upon and built up on reason and logic — and the forebears used to inveigh against whoever travelled that road and brand him an innovator.(1) Among them there is fierce disagreement over questions of it, the abandoning of which falls under “part of the excellence of a man's Islam is his leaving alone what does not concern him” — for it bequeaths diseases in souls. Whoever does not believe me, let him make the experiment. For among the men of principles (al-uṣūlīyah) the sword is out between them: this one anathematises that one, and that one declares this one astray. The uṣūlī who stands by the outward senses of the texts and by the transmitted reports — in the eyes of his adversaries they make him a corporealist (mujassim), a Ḥashwī and an innovator. The uṣūlī who drives figurative interpretation (taʼwīl) through to the end is, in the eyes of the others, a Jahmī, a Muʻtazilī and a man astray. And the uṣūlī who affirms some of the attributes and denies others and interprets figuratively in places — they call him self-contradictory. Safety and soundness are better for you. For should you excel in the principles and their appendages — logic, philosophy (al-ḥikmah), the philosophers, the opinions of the ancients and the perplexities of intellects — and should you together with that hold fast to the Book and the Sunnah and the principles of the forebears, and stitch reason and transmitted authority (al-ʻaql wa-al-naql) together, I do not think you will in this reach the rank of Ibn Taymīyah; no, by God, nor even come near it. And you have seen what his affair came to: the disparagement of him, the shunning, the charge of leading astray, the charge of unbelief, the branding as a liar — rightly and wrongly. For before he entered upon this craft he was luminous and radiant, with the mark of the forebears upon his face; then he became darkened and eclipsed, a pall of dust upon him, in the eyes of multitudes of people; and an impostor, a slanderer and an unbeliever in the eyes of his enemies; and an innovator yet excellent, exacting and brilliant in the eyes of certain groups among the sensible of the learned; and the bearer of

— Notes —

[21] to the exclusion of every raw ignoramus who is incapable of establishing a single chapter out of the chapters of jurisprudence according to any one of the schools, and who nevertheless becomes a mujtahid in all the sciences by a slight acquaintance with some of the chief headings of their questions. Are the imitators, then, not free to choose not to follow the likes of such a mujtahid! The learned man proceeds upon his knowledge, and he who does not know asks the trustworthy among the people of knowledge, in accordance with what the Book and the Sunnah pronounce; and upon this the practice of the community has continued — and you may name that whatever you please.

[21] (1) Were there no benefit to this science beyond insight into the grounds of apprehension of the imāms and into the modes of deriving rulings, that alone would suffice it for honour; and it is by this touchstone (al-mīlaq) alone that the current coin among the questions can be told from the counterfeit. Between sheer frozen imitation and independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) there are ranks, and those who have been given knowledge have degrees. It is not incumbent upon everyone who practises the principles that he depart from the beaten road of adherence in whatever his breast has been set at ease over and his insight has been illumined by, such that there come to be out of it schools and whims to the number of the persons of the learned. No man of sense, then, disparages this science. Al-Taqī ibn Daqīq al-ʻĪd did well, where you see him saying again and again in Sharḥ al-Ilmām: “the principles of jurisprudence are that which judges and is not judged upon.”

[22] (1) The latter-day men did not exist in the age of the forebears, so how can this disparagement come about? And have these one religion and those another? By God, that would be one of the great enormities! For the upshot of his words would be that the forebears were two mutually repudiating parties in the very root of belief, some of the latter-day men following the one party and some the other. The truth is that the creed of the Sunnah in Islam is one, forebears and latter-day men alike; it does not change and is not exchanged. What is renewed is rather the road of defending it, in view of its ever-renewed adversaries. And the censure of the science of dialectical theology (ʻilm al-kalām) on the part of those who held the station of leadership among the forebears is of necessity to be taken as bearing upon the kalām of the people of innovations and upon the plunging of the common man into it. The master Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī said, and said it well: “None denies the science of kalām but one of two men. An ignorant man who has settled into imitation, to whom the treading of the roads of the men of attainment has become burdensome, and who is void of the ways of the men of speculative reasoning — and people are the enemies of what they do not know; so when he was kept back from mastering this science, he forbade it to people, that they might stray as he strayed. Or a man who holds corrupt doctrines, and so wraps himself in hidden innovations, passing off upon people the defectiveness of his school and blinding them to the scandals of his creed, knowing that it is the men of attainment among the men of speculation who will tear the veil from his innovation and show people the ugliness of his pronouncements. The counterfeiter does not love him who can tell coins apart, and the flaw in what he holds of corrupt coin — such as the money-changer possessed of discrimination and insight. And God Most High has said: ‘Are those who know and those who do not know equal?’” End. And the boldest of people, and the most given to rending the veil of awe, in declaring an opponent an unbeliever — despite the severe threat that has come down concerning that — are the company of the Ḥashwīyah, as Ibn Daqīq al-ʻĪd says, and as

[23] appears from their books on the attributes, on divine unity, on the refutation of the Jahmīyah, on the censure of kalām and on the Sunnah, and from what they have composed on the criticism of transmitters. And the doctrine of the People of the Sunnah is that an opponent who belongs to the people of the qiblah is not to be declared an unbeliever.