Structured Presentation Can Lead to False Imagination!

Does Islam encourage imagination?

Let us make the answer short.

Allah says in the Quran [37:65] describing the tree of "Zaqquom" which is found in the Hell Fire: "Its crop as it were the heads of devil". No one of us had seen the "Devil" (Satan), but the Quran left it to our imagination to draw in our minds a dreadful image of how a tree will look if it produces crop similar to the heads of devil. This is an example of pure and effective imagination.

There is another side of imagination which is impure and ineffective, that is not presented by the Quran but by what we might call the intellectual study of the Quran and Islamic texts.

Believe it, or not believe it, the majority still believes that during our time, or during the life of our children, the Islamic caliphate-hood will return, where we imagine a large palace and a Sultan wearing a long robe with neat turban, few black slaves standing in the sides, and behind the curtains some of the most beautiful girls (probably European or American) are waiting for the Sultan.

That is too luxurious, because the expected caliphate should be less engaged in these worldly affairs.

Let us try to imagine again.

A person middle-aged with a moderately long neat beard, wearing a dark color robe, walking at night with a stick (similar to Omar bin Al-Khataab – may Allah be pleased with him) to check on his people. No one follows him, and probably in the morning he does not have an office.

I am confident in saying that no one imagines our new caliphate wearing a suit or a pair of jeans and a short sleeve shirt, or running the country from a skyscraper.

We have to also remind our imagination that this ruler will come to power through the help of some brave religious fighters, covering their faces and talented in riding horses, supported by thousands of soldiers carrying swords, which will be used to kill the Jews and all non-Muslims with the exception of few nations which will beg us to rule them.

Try to gather all the verses and hadiths that speak about the end of time: The Dajjal, Yajooj and Majooj, The Animal (Al-Daabbah), The Smoke, the two earth quakes, Al-Mahdi, Al-Sufyani, the advent of Jesus (peace be upon him)…etc and you will end up with a movie that you can never dream to see on Hollywood.

I take refugee in Allah from showing disrespect to the texts, or making the slightest fun of any of what have reached us as part of the revelation. Without the guidance of the Quran and the messenger (blessings and peace be upon him), we would have been in a very bad shape. We are speechless of valuing such gratitude and we have no escape from His mercy and power. Therefore, the above sarcasm should not be understood in harmony with the rationalist way of thinking that require scientific explanations for everything, as though the Human Mind is the ruling power of this universe.

The way we understand the texts is different than the texts themselves. What Allah or the messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) "meant" by a statement is different than what we think is "meant". We should not confuse this with the claim that all knowledge that we acquired from the Quran is "human-made" and has nothing to do with the divine guidance. This claim comes only from those ignorant of the science of Usul Al-Fiqeh, which divides the speech into different categories depending on the level of certainty about the meaning it denote. If everything in the Quran/Sunnah is subject to our interpretation (which is not error-free), then we can make no trust in the texts and the whole purpose of the messagehood is lost. When Allah says: "Establish the prayer", then we are not talking about something metaphoric; it is the prayer that we know as explained to us by the prophet peace be upon him. Similar argument is extended to wine, usury, Zakat, piligrimage…etc. Therefore, I am referring here to our interpretations of the texts which we sometimes mistake to be the texts themselves. More specifically, in this article I am referring to the false understanding of the texts resulted from gathering different verses in a specific manner that misrepresent the objectives and wisdoms of theses verses.

Let me give an example, and then come back to the verses and prophetic traditions talking about the end of time. I hope that through this example, the main idea of this article gets elaborated.

Allah has the most beautiful and perfect names and attributes. Anyone who reads the famous hadith in Tirmidhi (also narrated by Ibn Habban, Al-Hakim and others) about the 99 names of Allah will be overwhelmed by the majesty and beauty of these names. At the end of Chapter 59 (Al-Hashr) some of these names are mentioned in a fascinating way that we can't help but to have wet eyes when we hear it. This is the divine way of mentioning His attributes, and there is wisdom in such "structure of knowledge".

On the other hand, tell me what you feel when I narrate to you the following: "The Jews said Allah's hand is tied up. Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for the blasphemy they utter. Nay, both His hands are widely outstretched", "The hearts are between two fingers of Allah; He flips them as He wish", "So He will put His foot in it (the Hell fire)", "…So He unveils to them His leg", "And the skies are folded in His right hand", "Allah descends in the last third of the night", "Allah laughs at two men …". "You were brought by my eye". All of these narrations are either verses from the Quran or well-authenticated prophetic traditions. The problem when someone narrates them in such a manner is the fact that the listener can not stop but to imagine the Lord (may He be exalted from all this) as having two hands, fingers, legs, feet, He laughs, He descends… etc, which resemble our perception of human beings.. Imam Ibn Al-Arabi Al Maliki said: "and someone like this did not worship the lord nor he knew Him…. He only visualized an idol and worshiped it". Imam Al-Ghazali, who is one of the cleverest scholars in our Islamic civilization, clearly declared that such gathering (structuring) of the verses is prohibited and is a form of innovation (1).

Allah (may He be exalted) does not have organs, nor He is composed of parts. There is nothing whatsoever unto Him, and He is not unto anything. Anything that we have seen, heard of, or imagined, then Allah is not like it. This is the belief of the true believers who attest to His perfection and transcendence. Therefore, someone who gathers such verses and compiles it in a book has done a major mistake and only helped spreading anthropomorphism [tajseem]. This false representation of the traditions is still alive in the Salafi (literalists) writings, and has caused many unnecessary debates in our time.

The metaphors hidden in these verses/traditions have tremendous intellectual and emotional power in delivering a specific idea (belief) to the addressee (the believers). When Allah says for example [67:1]: "Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He has power over all things", the listener will perceive an absolute control and possession of the worlds, and will appreciate the divine omnipotence over the creation which leads to submission and slave-hood. There is nothing mentioned in the verse about the "Hand" being an attribute of Allah, because the linguistic structure of the verse does not imply such conclusion. This is one of the reasons that explain the early Muslim scholars' aggressiveness about discussing such "illogical" and "useless" interpretations. Therefore, when someone compiles this verse with other verses that mentioned the "Hand", has actually taken these verses out of context, because the attention will be directed now to the question whether Allah has a Hand, which is a question that carries many false presumptions (2).

There were previous scholars which compiled such prophetic traditions and verses, but for a different purpose. Their work had academic value which is to collect and classify different verses under various topics to facilitate referencing and future studies. However, some of the scholars realized the potential threat that such writing might impose on the theological level, and thus regretted writing such books. An example is the famous hadith scholar, Ibn Khuzaima, who regretted towards his late life writing his book "Altawheed" which he compiled while he was in his twenties (3). Imam Al-Bayhaqi had a different purpose of compiling such a book which is to provide the correct method of understanding these traditions (4), and that is why his writings are denounced by the Salafi thinkers. Others who left their compilations without any commentary were aggressively attacked by Ibn Al-Jawzi and others, for the potential mis-use of such writings as we described earlier. The conclusion of this point is that the early scholars were aware and afraid (to some extent) that such compilations might exceed the academic borders to the theological beliefs, and their fear is manifested today by many writings of the modern Salafi thinkers.

Going back to the traditions addressing the trails towards the end of time, we can see that unintentionally the order and structure of books addressing the end-of-time trials has affected our way of thinking. Sometimes we might be talking about these trials with little difference than our narrations of fairy tales, Chinese myths, or the Greek legends. If we look carefully at the context of the verses and the prophetic traditions, we will notice that there was a specific practical or spiritual lesson to be learnt from mentioning these events which has little to do with mere narration of future events. However, these spiritual and practical lessons are lost with such representation, which leaves us with incorrect imaginations that has little to do with our daily lives.

Take for example, the concept of Al-Mahdi, which we were told in the context of reviving our hope in Him in the difficult times. We have a large sect of Islam (i.e. Shiasim) which revolves much around this concept, and feelings of restlessness and expectation for his advent dominates much of the "simple" mind that we possess.

It is not surprising to find many of the modern "rationalist" Muslims today take the other extreme by proposing funny interpretations to these events, and many times deny the authenticity of these traditions. Our faith in His supreme Power and perfect Will puts us in security against such claims, which comes from individuals who still believe that the universe is revolving around their intellect.

What we ask for is to read, understand and deliver the verses and prophetic traditions in its right context which mix theology, spirituality and day-to-day affairs. Separating these concepts, or compiling different verses/traditions in an order that they were not presented with, is a tricky slip in our thinking which we should avoid.

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(1) See: Iljam al-'awamm 'an 'ilm al-kalam (Warding off the Masses from Sciences of Theology)

(2) The correct method for understanding such verses as proposed by our noble scholars will be discussed in details in a separate post insha'Allah.

(3) See Siyar 'ala'am alnubala' by Imam Al-Dhahabi.

(4) See Al'asma' wa alsifaat.

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