 So as we move along here, I'm going to have to define some terminology for you so that we're on the same page. So the word creed, first of all, comes from a Latin word credo, which means I believe. In Greek we say disteo, from pistis, I believe. Things I have faith in. So the word in Arabic is Aqidah, which the root, so it's a tri-lateral root, which means to tie or to bind or to hold down the tie and knot. So the word uqda, you'll find in the Quran, for example, the prayer of Moses of the burning bush, the praise of God, according to the Quran, he says, literally unravel the knot from my tongue, which is translated, of course, remove the impediment from my speech. So this is the cognate of this in the Hebrew is the same letters, and just as a side note, this word actually comes directly from a word in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis chapter 22. Abraham binds his son, Isaac, and the Hebrew says, means then he bound his son. And that passage in the Hebrew Bible is called ha aqidah, the aqidah, the binding or the bounding of Isaac. So aqidah means a set of beliefs that are binding upon every Muslim. Every Muslim is incumbent upon every Muslim to believe in these tenets. So when we talk about creed, we're essentially talking about three areas of study, three major areas, as you can see on the handout, the first area is known as theology, which is ilahiyat, who is God, what are the attributes of God, what are the conceivabilities for God, what are the inconceivabilities for God. Now early Orthodox stylisticians, which are called they actually had to come up with a working definition for God. And you're probably thinking, well how can you define God when you express the infinite with finite language and so on and so forth. We have to understand that they had to do this out of necessity. Why do they have to do it out of necessity? Because this is very important, the nature of credo language is that it's polemical, it's responsive, it's reactionary. They're responding to certain elements within the tradition that are saying things that they deem to be heterodox or not correct. We'll talk about what that means. So their definition of God is very simple. They say al-wajib al-wujud, the one who has vital existence, al-mustaqik li jami'il kamalat, he's deserving of every perfection. And he is transcendent or he is free from every type of deficiency. And of course his very broad definition Jews and Christians also agree with this definition, but it sort of puts us in the right direction, so to speak. So why do Muslims study creed? It's actually an obligatory field of study for every Muslim to have some knowledge of creed because it acts as a protection against deviant beliefs. That's number one. And the other reason is it's incumbent upon every Muslim to love God, right? So this is the ultimate goal of studying theology. And ever, like I said, every Muslim has to have some level of theological education in order to have a relationship with God. So the Muslim scholars say before there's mahabba, before there's love of God, there must be gnosis of God, there must be ma'rifat to Allah, you must have knowledge in order to love something. You can't love something, you don't know. This is the philosophy behind it. So Muslims believe in this doctrine known as progressive revelation, where this aspect is not new to the Islamic tradition. This is something that's found in the previous revelations and dispensations. As Muslims would say, for example, very quickly in Mark chapter 12, a scribe comes to Jesus and says, what is the greatest commandment? Here is the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. And then he continues and he says, and he's quoting from the Torah, and he says, and you must love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart. And the construction in Hebrew, you have a conjunction with a perfect tense, which makes it imperative, you must love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, with the kudna shecha, with the kudmehudecha, all of thy strength and with all of thy being. So this is something that is the point of studying theology. This is the goal, this is the aim, this is the objective of studying theology, is to draw near to the divine. So it's not something where Muslims will learn all of these different do's and don'ts and these different parameters and whatnot and just be able to rehash them like a parrot, that's not the point of it. Even though that's important, we should know, Muslims are taught to know the parameters of their belief and what's acceptable and whatnot, but that's not the ultimate goal of it. So that's the first area is theology. The second area is known as prophetology or nubuat. So this deals with the nature and function of prophets, the conceivabilities for prophets, the inconceivability for prophets. Now there are certain Muslims, known as the ash'aidi, we'll talk about who are the ash'aidi, it's an acceptable school of theology amongst the tradition, that will take a subcategory of nubuat called mystical prophetology and this deals with what's known as the reality of the Muhammadan nature or the idea that the prophet Muhammad has ontological or temporal precedence over the rest of creation. Not an essential or absolute pre-existence, that's only for God, but the sense that the prophet is the best of creation while he was sent last in temporality and time, his creation, the creation of his soul actually predates the creation of Adam. Whether Muslims believe in this or not at the end of the day is a little consequence because either way the prophet is still creation and this is the whole point, that there's nothing uncreated except God in his attributes. So this roughly approximates the Aryan position represented at Nicaea 325, the group of Christians that held that very position about Jesus, they called Jesus kattisma teleon, the best of creation. Their motto was e'ing patehatehuk e'ing, which is Greek which means there was a time when he was not, there was a time when Jesus was not. This type of belief is probably influenced early the origins of the ash'aidi tradition as well. The third area of study is called Super-Rational Transmissions. These are Samayyat in Arabic, so these are events that are incumbent upon every Muslim to believe in. But these are events that are only known through what's known as naqad or revelation. So these are events that are known through a text of some sort that Muslims believe to be sacred. For example, the Qur'an, which is the uncreated pre-eternal speech of God according to the Islamic theologians, or hadith. Hadith are reversely authenticated statements attributed to the prophet Muhammad. And when theologians look at the hadith, the statements of the prophet, because there's millions of hadith under different grades and whatnot, they only take the best of the best to derive credo statements from, to make sure that the most, that there's no dissension, most people believe in it, so it's easier to canonize. So they would take hadith that have reached a level known as Tawato, multiple attestation, and there's only less than a thousand of those hadith, out of the something three million hadith. Okay, so the Super-Rational Transmissions, for example, what's an example of a Super-Rational Transmission? Like the night journey and ascension of the prophet, right? Or the standing on the concourse on the day of judgment. These are things that are only known through revelation. You can't prove these things empirically, or you can't prove very much empirically. But since they're mentioned in revelation, and they're multiply attested, it's incumbent upon Muslims to believe in them. The intercession of the prophet, for example, the day of judgment. Many things crossing the bridge, for example, questioning in the grave. So the study of Islamic Creed not only deals with what Muslims believe, but why do they believe it? Okay, but language cannot describe the reality of faith. That's ineffable. And we're not, we're not trying to describe what faith is, or what experiential theology is. We're only using language to describe what Muslims believe, and why do they believe it? What are the forces theological, social, historical, and otherwise that motivated early formulaic, credo articulations by the scholars of Ahl-e-Sunnah wa-ja-ma'a. So this title, Ahl-e-Sunnah wa-ja-ma'a, that's the, that's the large title of Sunni orthodoxy. Okay, so when you hear, when you hear me say Sunni orthodoxy, I'm referring to Ahl-e-Sunnah wa-ja-ma'a, which literally means the people of the prophetic precedent and the majority. Okay, so one of my professors at DTU, John Francois Racine, he studied under Bart Nerman, who's of course famous for misquoting Jesus, orthodox corruption, scripture, whatnot. He's an expert in the field of tetral criticism in the New Testament. He coined a term, which I'm going to use, I think it's a brilliant term, called proto-orthodox, proto-orthodox, or the forerunners of orthodoxy. So proto-orthodox scholars represented what would eventually become standard belief in that tradition. So this is before creeds were codified. Okay, we call them proto-orthodox, of course, versus the heterodox, heterodox in Greek, meaning other, right, so this is considered to be a deviant position. This probably takes cue from Paul's letter to the Galatians when he chastises them for believing in heteron iwangilium, or another gospel, a different gospel, a heretical gospel. So orthodoxy, straight thinking, heterodoxy, deviant teaching. So I'll utilize this term proto-orthodoxy, which will be used interchangeably with proto-sunni. So proto-sunni scholars are Muslim scholars who represented what eventually would become the standard Sunni belief, forerunners of Islamic orthodoxy. So very quickly, just very, very quickly, because it'll help us to give us some, it'll help us conceptualize. We're going to see what happened in the Christian tradition, their obvious parallels, it'll help us conceptualize. So there's a three step, there's three steps in creedal canonization, and it usually takes about four centuries. Ironically, this took four centuries in Christianity and Islam. The first step is called proclamation, which leads to a clarification, and then you have a codification or canonization. This usually takes four centuries. It took about four centuries in the Christian tradition and the Islamic tradition. So I'll give you an example very quickly. So you have Jesus and his disciples who believe certain tenets. They had faith convictions, they proclaimed them. It's called the Kerugma, the early Christian proclamation. By the end of the first century, maybe earlier to the fourth century, you have all of these different groups coming out, having different Christologies, different ideas of who Jesus was, different soteriologies, different ideas or concepts of salvation. So you have groups like Ebionites and Marcia Knights and Patrick Passianis and motorists and all Gnostics and the Dose of Tei, all of these different groups claiming to be in the Christian tradition. And then you have the proto-Orphodox Christians. Now, most of these groups had their share of specialists. They have speculative theologians, they had polemical theologians. What did they do? They busied themselves writing refutations of their opponents and clarifying their positions. So they would busy themselves writing refutations of their opponents and clarifying their positions. So the proto-Orphodox Christian fathers, for example, like Clement and Origen and Justin, Irenaeus, Eusebius, many, many more. So by the fourth century, you have the time of the great codifiers. By the fourth century of the Christian era, the great codifiers like Athanasius of Alexandria and the Greek East, Augustine of Hippo and the Latin West, Cappadocian Church fathers and Asia Minor, the two great Greeks named Basil. What did they do? They refined and systematized the beliefs of their proto-Orphodox predecessors. They refined and systematized their belief. Therefore, the earliest proto-Orphodox Christian creeds come from this period of fourth century, the apostolic creed, the Athanasian creed, the Nicene creed after 325, the Nicio-Constantino polity creed after 381, which is the most orthodox creed. So following this line, now we can look at what happened in Islamic tradition. So similarly, you have the Prophet Muhammad and his disciples, and the Prophet lived from 570 to 632 of the common era, and they likewise proclaimed a message known as a reisala. So it was called a kerugma in the Christian tradition, and the Islamic tradition is called the reisala. Now here's something interesting. The first generation of Muslims, the first generation known as the Sahaba, they did not engage in speculative discourse, what's known as Edomud Qadam. They didn't engage in Qadam. There was no need for it. They never asked the questions, for example, was the Qur'an created? It never even occurred to them. Do human beings create their own actions? These things weren't brought up until later. They were issues until later. Like today, the theists are asked questions like, if God is omnipotent, it's the stone conundrum, can he create a stone that's too heavy for him to lift? Can God, what was the one, can he warm up a burrito so hot that he can't eat it? Or they say, where is God? Who created God? This type of thing. These questions didn't even occur to the first generation, and I think the reason why is they experienced their theology. There was no reason to question it. They experienced it. They're with the Prophet, and they saw him perform these miracles reportedly. So this was never an issue with them. And likewise, the original disciples of Jesus, they experienced their theology. So these questions weren't brought up until much later. But you're given the second and third generations, and as the empire, the Islamic empire is growing under the Umayyad and the Abbasid dynasties, now you have Jewish and Byzantine and Persian peoples becoming Muslim, and then looking at Islam through their own hermeneutical lens, so to speak. So now these different ideas start coming up. Also, Muslims came into contact with seasoned Jewish and Christian Hellenized philosophers. So many of these issues were raised. So what happened now? It necessitated, it necessitated, reasoned responses and clarifications from these proto-Sunni scholars. It was necessary. Again, Cretal language is by nature responsive. It refutes heresies. It clarifies positions, right? So the classic example is the Lagos of the Yohannin Gospel. So when Islam went into the Levant, or in Cham, in Syria, and into Egypt, Christian philosophers had heard of the Qur'anic revelation and referred to Jesus Christ. So they were wondering, is this and the Qur'an refers to Jesus as the Word of God, right? It's called it in Malahikatriya Maryu, Inna Laha, Yubashiruqi, b'kalimetimimu. The angel said, Oh Mary, God gives you glad tidings of a word from him, Ismahul Masih, who was called Christ, Issa Numa'yim, Jesus, the son of Mary. So these Hellenized Christian philosophers were asked to Muslims, is this the Lagos or the Yohannin Gospel, right? John 1.1 where it says, In the beginning was the Word, right? Which implies that the Word has an essential pre-existence. Ka'i HaLagos aim prostam Theon, and the Word was with God, meaning that the Word has a separate and distinct entity or existence, but there's some dynamic relationship with God. Ka'i Theos aim HaLagos, and God was the Word. They share an essential nature. So it necessitated, obviously it's not the same concept as the Kenyatta Law, or the concept of Christ in Islam. But this is just an example of how or why Muslim theologians began now to study Christian theology in order to formulate reason the responses to what they were hearing. However, the first sectarian had nothing to do with outside influences, meaning Hellenistic, Jewish, Christian, Byzantine, or Persian. So it's on the sheet here. I'm going to go through these heterodox groups of Muslims and demonstrate to you how these groups influenced the codification, the canonization of Islamic formulaic, credo-articulations. How did these groups influence credo-literature? The first group I'm going to talk about are known as the Khawarij. The Khawarij, meaning seceders, or the Karajites. This was actually at the time of the first generation towards the end of the first generation of Muslims in the 7th century. They were nomadic Bedouin, for the most part. They were not trained by any of the companions of the Prophet, at least that's the Muslim claim. They espoused a very puritanical type of fire and brimstone theology. They believed that if a Muslim committed a mortal sin, then they had apostated from the community and it was their right to kill that person. So they would actually go down into cities and hamlets and they would raid them and they would indiscriminately massacre everyone. Montgomery Wat calls their actions pure or sheer terrorism. So obviously we have an element of neo-Khawarij in the world today as well. They're very exclusivist. If you didn't believe exactly as I believed, you're not even a Muslim. This type of thing. Very exclusivist type of beliefs. They would anathematize companions of the Prophet who did not believe as they believe. In other words, it would make tuck fear of them. Anathematize means they would declare them as being apostates and they would kill them. So the 4th Caliph, for example, his name was Ali. He was the nephew of the Prophet. He was killed by a man of the Khawarij in Kufar, Iraq in 661 of the common era. The man's name was Abdul Rahman ibn Mujam al-Nuradi. He stabbed the Caliph Ali as he was leaving the mosque. So that's the first group, the Khawarij. So that's what they believe. You commit a mortal sin, whether it's a small sin from the minor sins, Saha'er or from the major sins, the Qabah'er. You forfeited the rights of community. You apostated and you are to be killed. This type of mentality. The second group are called the Shia. Now I'm coming from a Sunni perspective. So if I was the Shia, for example, you would hear a very different story. So I'm coming from the perspective of a Sunni Muslim. So the Shia, partisans of Ali, these are viewed as diametrically opposed to the Khawarij. In other words, they would come to believe that the 4th Caliph Ali was an infallible Imam or leader, infallible. So they impute upon him a prophetic attribute, as Muslims believe their prophets are infallible or free of major sin. And that he was ordained by God, the Shia, I believe that Ali was ordained by God to inherit the temporal caliphate, the temporal kingdom of the prophet. And they also believe certain companions of the prophet took advantage of the situation of the death of the prophet and usurped power in order to take the caliphate away from the Caliph Ali. This is the largest sectarian today in the Muslim world, the Shia. The third group are called the Mujesimah, the anthropomorphists. So these are people who made literal ta'wil or interpretation of Quranic verses that ostensibly, that apparently indicated anthropomorphism. For example, in the Quran you read, the ayinullah, which can be translated the eye of God, or yadullah, which can be translated the hand of God, or the sap, the shin. So the anthropomorphists in Mujesimah, they would take these verses as literal. So God literally has a hand, it's made of substance, he's located in his creation, he's physically seated on the throne, he's wearing a robe, he has certain facial features like that, very anthropomorphic, right? They're giving, they're describing human qualities, or created qualities to the divine, right? So they say, God has jisimurakda, he has a compartmentalized body, for example, he dwells within his creation. So this idea of substance, right? Ajran in Arabic, this was also found to be very problematic amongst Christian theologians in the late fourth century. In the Nicene Creed it says that Jesus shares a substancia with God, and they found this term substancia to be scandalous, so they removed it from the creed and created one of the common era. Muslims had a similar run-in with the word substance, with the mujesimah. God is not made of substance, the Qur'an says, there's nothing like God, and one of the attributes of God according to theologians is Muqad al-Fatun, which means that he is completely dissimilar to creation, and that eventually became the Sunni position, the Orthodox position. Other groups, the Jabariya, these other determinists, they said that man has no absolute, man has no volition, he has no free will, he is compelled to act, therefore he is not taken to account, which means eventually they came to deny the existence of hell, right? And of course hell is from the super rational transmissions, it's mentioned in Hadith, it's mentioned in Qur'an, so that was deemed an acceptable position. And then you have Qadariya, the dualists, man has absolute volition, God has nothing to do with evil, nothing to do with evil, and created, he's not pleased with it, he has nothing to do with it. So this was their answer to theodicy, the problem of evil in the world. They were called the Zoroastrians, because Zoroastrians were dualistic, leaving two gods, right? God of good, God of evil. The most challenging group to the Proto-Sunni or Proto-Orthodox were the rationalists, the Muortitesi that, the rationalists. And part of the reason that they were so challenging is because they actually ruled the Caliphate for over 200 years, so they were the ones in power for over 200 years, and they would actually, they would persecute Proto-Orthodox scholars for espousing certain beliefs. For example, the Muortitesilite Caliphs believed that the Qur'an was created. This was a major issue back during this time. Is the Qur'an created? Is it uncreated? So the Muortitesilite position is the Qur'an is created. The Sunni position is that it's uncreated. So any scholar that espoused that the Qur'an or taught his flock, that the Qur'an was uncreated, was sometimes tortured, persecuted, sometimes killed. Once a scholar, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, who is a scholar who, at his own codified school of jurisprudence, he had reached a level of complete juristic and methodological independence known as Ijtihad-Mutlak. He was actually tortured by the Caliph Ma'amun because he said the Qur'an is uncreated. There's another scholar, Imam Shafiri, who also was summoned to the Caliph, and the Caliph asked him, do you say that the Qur'an is uncreated? And he was very clever. So Imam Shafiri, he said the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the Qur'an, all of them are created. So the Caliph said, oh great, that's beautiful, you're free to go. So Imam Shafiri went back to his students and his students said, we heard a rumor, did you say that the Qur'an was created? And he said no, all I did was point to my fingers and say, all of these are created. My fingers, I just mentioned the poor books and I pointed to my fingers and he let me go. So Mu'tazilites also, so for the Mu'tazilites, remember we talked about the Semriyat, super-rational transmission. The Mu'tazilite, they denied the Semriyat. They believe in theology, they believe in Naboo'at, prophetology, but they said the Semriyat, they're not super-rational, they're irrational. We're not going to believe in them. There's no punishment in the grave, that's allegory. The prophet did not travel in body from Mecca to Jerusalem, that's ridiculous. There's no, the physical bodies arise from the dead, it's gone, it's completely, it develops, it's also gone, but they believe in the soul, they believe in afterlife. But some of these super-rational transmissions, they did not believe in. They also rejected divine attributes. They saw this as imputing plurality upon the deity. So the Mu'tazilites would say God doesn't have attributes. He is omnipotent in his very essence, whereas the Sunni position is that omnipotence is an attribute that is in addition to the essence, but it's not attached nor detached from it. So it's, I mean, from our perspective, who cares about this, but this was a major issue during this time. So for example, Mu'tazilites would say this pen is in blue, right? It's blue in its very essence. Blue is the pen and the pen is blue. There's no difference between blue and pen. It all emanates from the essence, whereas the Sunni position would be this is a pen and it has an attribute of being blue. But outside of this essence, blue doesn't have any meaning, which obviously is not true because you have blue sky, you have blue cars, you have blue hats and so on and so forth. But obviously, every analogy I gave will fall short because we're talking about these issues that are very hard to conceptualize. But apparently this was an extremely big deal at the time. Does God have attributes? Does God not have attributes? So the Mu'tazilites said God does not have attributes. They also believe that man creates his own actions, right? In other words, man creates evil. So the Sunni Orthodoxy will look at this and say, how can you say that God didn't create something? How can man create something? There's only one creator and they were charged down for being polytheistic by saying that. Mu'tazilites also believed that works give salvation, works give salvation. There's a myth no more even today if you're familiar with like, you know, polemical writings against Islam by Christian apologists and polemicists. They'll say Muslims believe, for example, that if you're 51% good and 49% evil, you go to heaven. If you're 51% evil and 49% bad, you go to hell. So your deeds are weighed. It's because the Quran talks about scales and things like that. But the Orthodox position has always been, the Sunni position has always been, that a person is saved only by the grace of God, not by their deeds, although the deeds are a byproduct of faith in God. So there's just quick descriptions. So this was during the formative years, the clarification process. And now we move into codification. So the proto-Sunni fathers from the late first century to the early third century. So now actually we're back here in the clarification. They're working under the framework of Sunni Orthodoxy. So some of these scholars, Abu Hanifa, for example, Malik Ibn Anas, Abu Muhammad, Ibn Al-Ijlis, the Shafi'i, Jaffa, Sadaf Ibn Muhammad, Hasan Al-Basri, Sa'id Ibn Musayyib, on and on and on. These proto-Orthodox Muslim scholars. And of course, we saw, these are the equivalent of, for example, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Irenaeus and Christian tradition. So by the late third century, early fourth century, much like, again, we saw the Christian tradition, we have the great codifiers of creed. And three men stand above the rest, and they're on the hand out here. The first one, Abu Mansour al-Nadridi, who died in 944 of the common hero. He's from some Afghan, he was a Persian. Abu Al-Hassan al-Ash-A'idh, who was from Iraq, 936 of the common Iraq. So these two men worked independently, yet they came to very similar conclusions. They differed in minor areas that are considered to be negligible. So the definition, the traditional definition of a Sunni Muslim is a Muslim who adheres to the theological school of either Maturidi or Ash-A'idh or both. And some say there's a third school, the Ath-Ari school, the Salafi school as well. But definitely the school of these two men is considered to be Sunni Orthodoxy. So what are some of the differences between the two? For example, Imam Ash-A'idh said that it's conceivable for a woman to be a prophet. And there's an opinion amongst the Ash-A'idhs that Mary and Mother Jesus was a prophetess, or that Asiya, the wife of the Pharaoh, was a prophetess. The Maturidi say this is only an office or a function of men. That's one of the differences. Another difference, and this actually is a big difference, I think, is the Ash-A'idhs say that the intellect must be aided by revelation in order to arrive at true theology, whereas the Maturidi position is the intellect is sufficient to know God. Right? So Imam Ash-A'idh said there's four conditions that make it incumbent upon someone to become Muslim, for example. And three of them Imam Maturidi agreed with. They are intellect, they are maturity, and the third one is, where's the third one? Intellect, maturity, sound senses, they're not blind and deaf. They can be either or, but not blind and deaf. The fourth one, Imam Ash-A'idh said, and it's unique in his opinion, is that he said, that a correct prophetic summons should have reached that person, that if a correct prophetic summons, the correct message of a prophet, whether it's a prophet Moses, or Jesus, or Muhammad, or Abraham or Noah, any prophet, if a person was not reached by that message in a good form, a correct form, not a corrupted form, if it didn't reach that person, then they're not responsible to believe in God, because the intellect is not enough to arrive at true theology, must be aided by revelation. Right? So I think that's actually a pretty major difference. Interestingly, Abu Hassan al-Ash-A'idh was a Murtese-like for over 30 years. He was a Murtese-like scholar. He studied under Abu-A'idh at Jattar, he was a Murtese-like master. And then he became, and then he left that and joined the proto-Sunni movement in the fourth century, and eventually became one of its great codifiers. The third scholar here, Abu Jaffa at Tahaoui, he was from Egypt. I have a copy of his creed called at Tahaouya, and I want to actually quote from the creed to demonstrate to you the polemical nature, the responsive nature, reactionary nature of creedal statements. So what did these three men do? They refined and systematized the beliefs of their predecessors. So the creed of Imam at Tahaoui is the simplest and the most popular creed. It's only 130 statements. Rowan Williams, who is the Archbishop of Kentiver, he read the creed and he liked it, and he encourages his diocese. In fact, all Christians, all Catholics and Protestant, to read this book to get a good idea, an authentic idea, as to what Muslims actually believe in. Here it's from a proto-Orthodox Muslim scholar from the formative years of Islam and not from some pundit or something like that. So he said, read this book. So we're going to look at a few of these statements and we'll end with this, God willing, just to demonstrate to you the nature of creedal literature. Remember we said, from the outset, the nature of creedal literature is that it's responsive. So he says here in statement 74, he says, We do not dissent from the majority of Muslims, right? And claiming the majority legitimizes his creed because there's a hadith of the Prophet, which is considered to be a sound hadith in which he said, Yadullahi ma'ala jama'ati, that the literally hand of God or the protective power of God is with the majority, right? So this statement is aimed or directed against heterodox denominations. Statement number 56, he says here. So he says, those saved are ultimately saved by God's decision or grace, and those damned are ultimately damned by God's decision. So this is a polemic against two, the Martesiite, the rationalist, who said a person's deeds give them salvation or give them eternal damnation. Another example. Statement 107 in the creed. Oh, this is a good one. That human actions are God's creations, but humanity's acquisitions. So this is the Sunni way of dealing with theodicy, the problem of evil, that God created evil. He created everything. He created evil actions, but since man has limited free will, he will take the consequences of those actions because of a limited free will. So this goes against the Martesiites. It's a polemic against them, because the Martesiites said man creates those actions. It's against the determinists, right? Who said man has no volition, and against the dualists as well. So man has absolute volition, right? Human actions are created by God. Even evil actions. God created everything. God is the only creator. But since man has a limited free will, that he takes the consequences of those actions. A couple more here are interesting. So this is number 80. Statement 80 out of 130. The believer does not lose his or her faith, except by denying that which made him or her a believer. So this is a polemic against the Khawarij, right? The seceters who said what? And if a Muslim commits a mortal sin, whether small or large, if a Muslim lies to someone or treats someone, they've left Islam. They've apostated. So here he's saying that unless a Muslim denies that which made him or her a Muslim, then they're still a Muslim. In other words, if they deny an essential article of faith, then they leave the faith, not because they did some sin. The Muslim position is everyone commits a sin, commits sins. A couple more here. One number 118 and 119, when we love the companions of God's Messenger, and we do not have extreme love for any of them. We assert the caliphate after the passing of the Messenger went to Abu Bakr So this is a polemic against Shia, who were saying that certain companions of the Prophet usurped is that Ali's caliphate. So he works this into a creed as well. Number 35, almost down here. Yeah, I have a little time. This is interesting. Inna Quran kalamu laa, that the Quran is the word of God. emanated from God without modality. And it's in its expression. There's no modality. There's no how. It's beyond comprehension. It is unlike human speech, which is created. So man samyahu wa za'ama annahu kalamu bashar faqad kafara. Whoever hears it and says, this is like human speech, has disbelieved. So this is a polemic against, again, the Mu'tazilites who said the Quran was created, not uncreated. The Sunni position is that the Quran reflects pre-eternal meanings. It's an attribute of God, therefore it's uncreated. The last one here. wa man wasa fa'allahu bima'anani bima'anil bashar faqad kafara. Whoever describes God as having human characteristics, has disbelieved. And obviously this is a polemic directed against the Mu'jassimah, where the anthropomorphists were very literal in their interpretation of verses in the Quran. So the conclusion is, Islamic creed did not fall out of the sky. It was the product of three centuries of rigorous scholarship in the face of other religious traditions, heterodox understandings, as well as sociopolitical factors. Therefore, credo-literature tends to be responsive and polemical in nature. So that's the end of my shfio to use a Yiddish word. If there's any questions or comments, I'll try to entertain them. If not, thank you for coming. I appreciate the opportunity. Yes, sir. So you mentioned that Imam Abu Mansour and Imam Abu Al-Hassan fall under the majority of the Sunnis. Imam Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi, what exactly is he because of what he's saying? Imam al-Tahawi, he was a contemporary of Ash-Ali and not too leading. So his credo-articulation is considered to be valid by both the Ash-Ali's and the not too leading. So he didn't have a, his students did not codify his opinions. It just happened like that, that the students of Ash-Ali and not too leading, they codified their teachers' opinions because they're probably more popular than at Tahawi. But as time went on, the creed of at Tahawi became the most popular credo treatise, even more than the creed of Ash-Ali and not too leading. That's why I'm quoting from the creed of Imam al-Tahawi. But he himself, his, his juristic identity was Hanafi, and he's considered to be maturidi. He's more leading towards maturidi than his aqida, based on his statements. But he's basically summarizing the opinions of Ash-Ali and maturidi. But his opinions weren't codified like the other two men were. There could have been a third school of theology known as the Tahawi or something. It just wasn't codified. But it's the simplest creed. It's only, like I said, only 130 statements. It's pretty easy to follow. So this is the book that I recommend to non-Muslims who want, even Muslims who want to know what do the orthodox say about Islamic creed, or Islamic belief? And difference of opinion is something that has been in this religious community in Islam since the very beginning. Imam Ash-Ali, he wanted to write a book on the differences, the juristic differences amongst the four scholars. Just a book on the differences within Sunni orthodoxy. And it turned out to be 130 volumes long, just on the differences within Sunni orthodoxy. So there's a lot of, it's certainly not a monolithic tradition. There's a lot of diversity even today. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they're very, very diverse. Any comments or questions? I hope I didn't bore anyone. Obviously this is ongoing very fast. Yes, yes sir. I think I'm trying to read my notes here. Okay. You said there were about a thousand statements or hadith, about three million that are considered creedal. Is that common to the Shia as well, or is that just specific to Sunni? Good question. So there's, yeah, there's millions of hadith, one thousand or so are considered to be multiply attested. Those thousand hadith scholars of Sunni orthodoxy have derived creedal statements and legislation from them. The Shia have different books of hadith. They don't accept the vast majority of the hadith of the Sunnis. And the reasoning behind it is that they believe the narrators of those hadith are unreliable. For example, out of the six companions of the Prophet to narrate over a thousand hadith, one of them was Aisha, the Prophet's wife. And the Shia have very unfavorable opinion about her. And Abu Herera also, he's a companion of the Prophet, a very unfavorable opinion of him as well, for various reasons. So the vast majority, they don't accept. They would accept hadith related, for example, by Ali, which are only about, there's only 142 of them, only 142 related by the Caliph Ali. So those, they would tentatively accept, but they have their own hadith collections. Shia creed is at times significantly different than Sunni creed. But most Sunnis would say that even with that said, they're still considered to be within the fold of Islam. There are some conservative Hanafis, for example, that would say that they're not Muslim. But that's a very much minority opinion. It's a creedal standpoint.