Introduction

When a Jahmite is bold enough to lie against Allaah that He is not above His Throne, and does not have the attributes of face, hands and eyes (all as attributes of His essence) despite Allah having affirmed that for Himself and the entirety of the Salaf (and the very early Kullaabis and Ash'aris) having taken all of that with acceptance (with negation of tamtheel and without any ta'weel and tafweed), and similarly when a Jahmite belies the Messenger (alayhis salaam) in these matters, then it is of no surprise that this Jahmite will think anything of lying upon the Salafi scholars and attributing to them what they are free of or twisting their words upon other than what they meant or decontextualizing their statements in order deceive the unsuspecting audience. This is not surprising to say the least. So we have one of these such Jahmites who tried it on with the following:

First of all note how there are not any references given, as in page numbers and editions, which is common practice with these people when it comes to these particular types of citations. But it makes sense, if you want to commit a crime, you've got to make sure you make it as difficult as possible to unravel, so you can't really fault the Jahmee for this. They need to make it as difficult as possible for people to go and verify for themselves and to see what is actually being said. They drop a few quotations, the audience who does not know any better, laps it up like milk, and the shyster will even receive a few pats on the back through the comments section, "Hey, well done, I am learning so much!" So this is the type of operational scam that is going on here.

Further, many of these people themselves are complete ignoramuses, they don't even have a clue about their own theology, but they think they know it. And with this flawed, deficient understanding of their own theology, they then approach the sayings of the Salafi scholars, only to completely misunderstand and misapply them. So this is the type of clown we are dealing with here. For an in-depth illustration of what has just been mentioned in this paragraph, please study the antics of this clown which we covered in detail. That will give you a standard benchmark with which to judge the circus performances that these Jahmites are doing these days.

Now this shyster has brought five or so matters in the above post and we will try to address them one by one inshaa'Allaah.

Concerning Allaah's Istiwaa' After Creating the Heavens and Earth

As you can see from the attempted fraud of this person called Zubair, the aim was to deny certain actions for Allaah, such as istiwaa', nuzul and the likes, just as it was to cause confusion about Allah's speech being tied to His will and power. All of this is considered by these people to be "hawaadith" which they considered created, and therefore to be denied for Allaah. This is in keeping with the Hellenized Kalaam theology taken from the Sabean idol-worshipppers (see here) which is the proof of huduth al-ajsaam and the resultant "negative theology" that is essential to it.

Coming to al-Tabari now and al-Istiwaa', lets post some aqidah gems which prove that al-Tabari affirms Allaah's Sifaat Fi'liyyah, as in actions Allaah chooses to do as and when He wills. It is a shame that the shyster who is the subject of this series of articles did not post these gems to present al-Tabari's true and real position.

Regarding the saying of Allaah:

ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلأَرْضَ وَمَا بَيْنَهُمَا فِي سِتَّةِ أَيَّامٍ ثُمَّ ٱسْتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلْعَرْشِ

Allah it is He Who has created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them in six Days. Then He Istawa (rose over) the Throne. (al-Sajdah 32:4)

Al-Tabari commented:

He, exalted be His remembrance, says: The deity besides whom none is worthy of worship, O mankind, "the one who created the heavens and the earth and what is between them" of creation, "in six days", then He made istiwaa over His Throne on the seventh day, after His creation of the heavens and the earth and what is between them, as has been narrated to us by Bishr who said: Yazeed narrated to us, who said: Sa'eed narrated to us from Qatadah [regarding the saying], "Allah, it is He Who has created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them in six Days. Then He Istawa (rose over) the Throne" [meaning]: On the seventh day. He says: O mankind, you do not have any deity except the one who did this action and who created this amazing creation in six days.

And al-Tabari comments on (25:59) where al-istiwaa is mentioned:

He says: "Then al-Rahmaan made istawaa over the Throne" and rose over it ('alaa alayhi) and that is on the seventh day in what is said.

And al-Tabari also comments on the mention of al-istiwaa in (57:4):

And His saying, "He is the one who created the heavens and the earth in six days", He, exalted be His remembrance says: He is the one who originated the seven heavens and earths, and arranged them and whatever is within them, then He made istawaa over His Throne, so He rose over it (irtafa'a, 'alaa).

Comments on the Above

There are a few issues that relate to the attempted fraud of the charlatan whose crime we are discussing:

The First: The Issue of Time and Allaah's Actions. This really requires a separate article, or series of articles, and inshaa'Allaah we will address this in due course. The issue is raised here because al-Tabari states that Allaah made istiwaa on the seventh day. Now you have to remember that to the Hellenized Kalaam theologists, they have a statement "Allaah is outside of place (makan) and time (zaman)" and this really is an ambiguous statement, it contains truth and falsehood in its ambiguity, and what the Kalaam theologists intend by it is to deny a) Allaah is above His Throne and b) That Allaah has speech and action tied to His will and power and which He does as and when He wills, such that He spoke to Adam, and spoke to Moses and spoke to Muhammad and will speak to the Believers in the Hereafter and so on, and such that He created the Throne when He wished and He created the pen when He wished and He created the heavens and earth when He wished, all with actions established with His essence and tied to His will and power. So with this dubious statement they wish to deny this belief of Ahl al-Sunnah, and they themselves have their own ways of trying to reconcile between their innovated doctrine and what is undeniable in literally thousands of revealed texts (the Book and Sunnah). So the Jahmiyyah, Mu'tazilah and Ash'ariyyah said, "al-fi'l huwa al-maf'ul" (the act is but the thing done itself, not that there is an independent act), so here they are denying actions are established with Allaah as an attribute of His essence and which are tied to His will and power, and what they mean is that Allaah's actions are nothing but what is found in the creation itself, not that an actual action can be established with Allaah, thus Allah's "act" of creating is but the creation itself, there is no "act of creation" established with Allaah, rather the act is the creation. This is the approach taken by the Mu'tazilah to deny attributes for Allaah's essence and they said Allaah's attributes are but the qualities He creates in the creation, which can be said to be His attributes because He created them, so they say Allaah has speech (Kalaam) but it is what He creates in others, but it can be said to be His attribute. Likewise, Allah's actions (such as creating, providing, giving life, taking life and so on) are nothing but the manifestations of these things in the creation, not actual actions established with Allaah. And the Maturidiyyah said that all of Allaah's actions come under one eternal attribute called al-takwin. Whatever the approach, the aim of them all is to deny that Allaah's speech and action is tied to His will and power, in other words the element of choice (ikhtiyaar), upon the doubt of hawaadith and encapsulation by time. In all of this, these Kalaam groups were trying to flee from what they call hulul al-hawaadith for Allaah, operating upon the Jahmee principle "Whatever is not devoid of hawaadith is itself haadith." And this is one of the main premises in the proof of huduth al-ajsaam that all of these groups made to be the foundation of their religion and with which they are trying to remain consistent.

Now, we don't want to digress and start discussing the issue of time in this article, but we just want to point out that al-Tabari explains what is manifest in the Qur'an that Allaah created the heavens and earth in six days and thereafater made istiwaa upon the Throne, on the seventh, with istiwaa being an action tied to His will and power (as opposed to being an action taking place in the creation, or being an eternal action). The point here is that there is a notion of time other than the one which is in this creation through the movement of the sun and moon [the six days of creation are other than the days of this universe], and just because Allaah's actions are often mentioned in the context of time as we know it, does not mean Allaah is encapsulated by time, since there are two totally separate issues: a) That time exists (which Allaah created, and all time is created by Allaah, and it is measurement of motion), and b) that Allah is able to speak and act according to His will and power. The second of these two matters is established on its own, independently, without the first. There does not need to be time (zaman, measurement of time, relational time) for Allaah to be one who speaks and acts according to His will and power, rather Allaah was always one who speaks and acts according to His will and power, before the creation of any of the azminah (measurements of time). And inshaa'Allaah we will dedicate a separate article to this matter and explain how the position of the Salaf is based upon the revealed texts and is in complete conformity with all the revealed texts. And as for the Jahmiyyah and all their offshoots, they are contenders and opposers to the revealed texts, and their doctrines simply cannot be reconciled with the thousands of verses and ahaadeeth in this regard, rather they contradict and clash with them.

The Second: That al-Tabari gave the explanation of istiwaa to mean irtafa'a and 'alaa (to rise over), and which shows the futility of the claim that the Salaf were upon tafweed of the ma'naa (meaning).

These are the real aqidah gems that this pretender should have posted if he was sincere, truthful, honest and aimed to give an honest representation of al-Tabari's creed instead of going on a fruit-picking mission.

Very Important Note

One of the very unfortunate things we have present today is the existence of a group of shysters, clowns, fraudsters and mischief-makers who are positioning themselves in between two factions, between the Salafis, who are upon the creed of the Salaf and between those whose creed is founded upon ilm al-Kalaam (Ash'aris, Maturidis). These mischief-makers (who are a very devious and crooked type of pseudo-Ash'ari and Maturidi) sit in the middle and their aim is to lie, swindle, deceive, distort, fabricate, confuse, distort to hearts content so that there remains a great cloud of confusion created in the middle where no one knows what on earth is going on, and and no one knows who really says what and who really believes what, and the aim behind all of it is to prevent people from coming to know the true and real Salafi aqidah. And no doubt there are sincere Ash'aris and Maturidis who pursue the truth (we have them write to us), but the actions of these swindling shysters in the middle creates more confusion than needs be.

It looks like a lot of these people are followers of that dajjaal called al-Kawthari who fabricated and invented a new type of enmity against Ahl al-Sunnah in the 20th century, one replete with the most vicious type of cunning and plotting against Ahl al-Sunnah and its scholars, and with much lying, fabricating, distorting and with a great deal of scholarly dishonesty. These people are not like those with honesty, true-scholarship and justice, like for example the Hanafi Maturidi scholar who authored the book Jalaa' al-Aynayn Bi Muhaakamah al-Ahmadayn, Abu al-Barakaat Nu'maan bin Mahmud al-Alusi (d. 1317H), and likewise you will also find fairness and justice with some other Maturidis like Muhammad Anwar Shah al-Kashmiri who discussed specific contentious aspects of belief with perfect justice, and did justice to the views of Ahl al-Sunnah - even if we consider him to be upon error otherwise.

So the reality is that that the average Ash'ari and Maturidi is being taken for a ride, there is a hijack in place, and the quicker these shysters and clowns are exposed and removed, then the atmosphere will be much cleaner and appropriate for meaningful, objective, knowledge-based discussions devoid of bigotry. What we have right now is clueless deluded clowns making a presence on blogs, forums and websites, posting quotes here and there about which they are clueless and they don't really understand what they mean, but they quote them because they think, with their crippled, feeble intellects, that there is support for their misguided doctrines in these statements when the reality is otherwise. These people are simply "clutter", if you like, and the quicker they are washed out, the cleaner and greener the environment will become. So we give sincere advice to all sincere truth-seeking Ash'aris and Maturidis, you need to get rid of these shysters and clowns and not allow them to represent you or speak for you anymore.