Synopses & Reviews
This book constitutes an important milestone in classical Muslim discourse about the nature of God. It has been studied and taught by Muslim students and scholars for over 800 years making it an authoritative treatise on understanding the attributes and nature of God according to Muslim orthodoxy. The author, Ibn al-Jawzi, noted the prevalence of likening God to creation and attributing a body to God among scholars who claimed to follow the school of Imam Ahmad ibn al-Hanbal (one of the four founders of schools of Law in Islam). This text was then written as a robust rebuttal against fellow Hanbali traditionists who exposed an anthropomorphic conception of God. The author charges that literalists reject reason on the basis of exclusive resort to the patent meaning of transmitted texts. The invalidation of reason, which was practiced by some of the earliest sects of Islam was revived some two hundred years ago. By taking the source texts in their apparent meaning only, what results is a perversion of the Islamic doctrine of the Attributes of God. Reliance on a classical text such as this one, leaves no room for the introduction of alien creeds and saves one from two extremes: denial of the attributes of God and its opposite anthropomorphism, the relating of Gods attributes to physical manifestations. There is no time better than today to introduce this text for an English-reading audience when the subject of doctrine has become one of controversy and confusion. This book provides a classical approach to understand the Attributes of God based on the writings of one of the most accepted and reliable scholars from the community of orthodox Muslim scholars.The author, Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/ 1201) was the foremost Hanbali in his age and most probably the greatest polymath in his Madhhab (school of law) and certainly one of the most prolific scholars of the Islamic civilisation.
Synopsis
This highly controversial treatise, written in the 12th century by one of Islams most prolific writers, takes a strong stance against fellow Hanbali traditionists, refuting those who espoused an anthropomorphic conception of God. The nuances surrounding the intense debate of figurative interpretation and literalism in the medieval Muslim world are clearly translated and accessible to the layperson as well as Islamic scholars, while detailed appendices delve deeper into the way medieval intellectuals interpreted ambiguous Koranic texts and provide thorough biographies of great theological thinkers of the Muslim world.
About the Author
'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi al-Hanbali(509-597/AH 1116-1201 CE) was the Imam of the Hanbalis and foremost orator of kings and commoners in his time, whose gatherings reportedly reached one hundred thousand. A master of the Prophet's traditions, philologist, commentator of Koran, expert jurist, physician, and historian of superb charachter and exquisite manners. Ibn al-Jawzi was a prolific author of over seven hundred books. He is considered as one of the most prolific of all writers that the Islamic Civilisation produced.Abdullah bin Hamid 'Ali spent five years studying Arabic language at the Quba Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies under the tutelage of Imam Anwar bin Nafia Muhaimin and his brother, Anas bin Nafia Muhaimin. He later went on to become the first American to attend and graduate from the Faculty of Sharia at the University of al-Qarawiyyin, Fez in Morocco. He currently resides in Philadelphia, PA (USA), where he works as an Islamic Chaplain at the State Correctional Institution of Chester, PA, and conducts regular classes and lectures in the Philadelphia-New Jersey area.Khalid Yahya Blankinship is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Temple University. His book, "The End of the Jihad State: The Reign of Hisham ibn `Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads" was published by the State University of New York Press in 1994; he also translated two of the thirty-eight volumes of "The History of al-Tabari" for the Tabari TranslationProject. In addition to courses on Islam, he regularly teaches Introduction to World Religions and Religion and Science.