—like a mursal report. Yet what is the ruling on a mursal report? Is it not, in the eyes of the hadith specialists, one of the kinds of weak reports? How, then, can any virtue be established on its basis—let alone a point of doctrine claiming that Allah, exalted is He, will seat His Prophet ﷺ with Him upon the Throne?
Whoever allows such a doctrine to stand on the strength of this athar—whose best possible status, as we have said, is that of a mursal report—must, by the same logic, accept every mursal hadith, even if it clashes with the Sharīʿah. Take, for instance, the story of the Gharāniq: it comes through several mursal chains whose links to their respective Successors are sound, and those Successors explicitly raise it to the Prophet ﷺ, as I have shown in my monograph Naṣb al-Majānīq. So if the author—may Allah pardon him and us—ultimately justifies accepting this athar on the pretext that it is inconceivable for Mujāhid to have said such a thing without transmitted instruction, then he should also accept the story of the Gharāniq on the ground that its narrators among the Successors have plainly raised it to the Prophet ﷺ. Indeed, accepting that story would be even more warranted: first, because of the explicit elevation, and second, because it is reported by a group, unlike the solitary athar of Mujāhid. In this there is a lesson for whoever will take heed.
118 – al-Ṭaḥāwī, the Imām (239–321 AH)
285 – The foremost scholar of Egypt in his time, Imām Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Salāmah al-Azdī al-Ṭaḥāwī al-Ḥanafī (may Allah have mercy on him), said in the creed he composed:
“An exposition of the sunnah and the community upon the school of the jurists of the religion—Abū Ḥanīfah, Abū Yūsuf, and Abū Muḥammad (may Allah have mercy on them):
We affirm the oneness of Allah, believing that Allah is One, without partner and without anything resembling Him. He has ever existed with His attributes, eternally, before He created His creation. The Quran is the speech of Allah: it issued from Him, without modality, as speech; He sent it down upon His Prophet as revelation, and the believers accepted it in truth, certain that it is, in reality, the speech of Allah—not created. Whoever hears it and claims that it is human speech has disbelieved. The vision of Him by the inhabitants of Paradise is true, without encompassing Him and without inquiring into how. Everything on this matter that is authentically reported from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is just as he said it, and its meaning is as He intended. We do not engage in it by interpreting according to our opinions, nor can one’s footing in Islam be firm except upon the foundation of submission and surrender. Whoever seeks what has been barred from his knowledge and is not content with submission, his quest will veil him from pure monotheism and sound faith; and whoever does not protect himself from both negation and anthropomorphism will slip and fail to attain transcendence.”
[He continues thereafter.]