psyah

Case specific logical truth

In this example the whole sentence is true for the specific case:

Which would not be true for:

Replacing only the nouns.


The deduction fallacy

It is a fallacy to mandate the deduction of definitions from statements using undefined terms

Which one is true?
Everyone would answer the first is true and the second is too stupid to be true.

How about?
But because I had not previously defined that ‘my mum’ is really a brand name for a type of cooker utensil one can arrive at mute conclusions.

Common Understandings - Implication

These are the same sentences but the nouns are different and hence the common understandings shown in parentheses are what define the difference in each of these sentences. These are implied by what is common about each of these nouns.



The precedence of definitions over common understandings - Contextualisation

If I say;
One can deduce that ‘little Johnny’ is ‘a celebrity’ (to be commonly understood), assuming further that Little Johnny is my son.

If however, I first say;
The definition of little Johnny changes from that what is commonly understood.

It therefore leads on to my conclusion which is that the Athari creed actually engages in Kalam, by making the ‘ta’wil’ that:

,

A deduction fallacy has been made from the Qur’anic statement that we are made by the Hands of God. While knowing that God is nothing like His Creation we can neither say that God has Hands nor can we say he does not. We can however say that the term ‘Hands of God’ cannot be taken in the same sense as ‘hands of man’ in the common understanding. Hands in the common understanding are the physical limb, there are other understandings of the term hand in the metaphoric domains, but these are also ta’wil.

The identity crisis – warning in metaphoric language

There is one more level of sophistication that needs to be understood, and that is even when there is an identity being made, it cannot always be accepted without prior thought given to the homologous network of definitions. This is to say that all sayings pertaining to God need to be in agreement with each other and that takes the highest precedence.

We can all believe that God is Most Merciful, or that God is First/Unique, but when we say:

We are forced to view this as metaphor because other definitions prevent us from taking this as a literal definition of God. We cannot say God is Light which is unlike the light of the sort that we can see. Nor can we say that there is a certain Light which is upon the light that we see and that Light is God. We might be able to say that that Light is the Light of God, and leave it at that. Rather we are forced to take the term ‘Light upon Light’ as a new definition something that we cannot know but yet somehow reconcile in ourselves like an analogy for our sanity rather than for what represents reality. People call this metaphor.

If we do ta’wil we need to make sure we do not make creedal definitions of those conclusions unless of course the ta’wil has been done and presented in the Sunnah or by the words of the Sahabah. We can therefore say that such and such an Attribute can be understood like so and so, but only Allah (SWT) Knows the truth about Himself or what He chooses to Identify with, and we are content to leave it like that.

Imam At-Tahawi (RA) has tactfully avoided defining the Attributes but has clearly stated that we need to believe in all of them, without rejection but at the same time deny any association of them to the Creation.

It means that even metaphoric interpretations are sometimes dangerously close to what we associate for created attributes. Just as a literal human hand cannot be the same as the term ‘Hand of God’ in the same way a metaphoric human hand also cannot be the same as the term ‘Hand of God’ … either way we MUST apply detachment from what we understand to what we believe is Real, be it metaphoric or literal. Either are just ways to cater for our sanity and give us perspective, also neither are rejections of the Attributes.


The final base to cover is how we know something is or is not an Attribute. We leave this to the Qur’an and Sunnah and the People of Knowledge to decide about but in summary:


> We need to accept the Attributes
> To accept the Attributes we need to know them
> To know the Attributes we need to decide what constitutes them
> To decide what constitutes them we need to make use of evidence
> To make use of evidence we need to define the rules of analysis
> To define the rules of analysis we need to apply objectivity of reason
> Objectivity of reason is nothing more that consistency in our arguments.

And Allah (SWT) Knows Best

*Jeena*

AssalaamuAlaykum

MashAllah! Very clear and a good explanation. jazakAllahukhairan.

WassalamuAlykum.

Dushwari

thanks for sharing this amazing anology and explicative with us, brother psyah.