Christian debates leading to Muslim debates over "Is Quran created?"

Yasir Qadhi Library Chat #13 Origins of the Ṣifāt Controversy

This is part 1 of the Creed & Power series. Here are the links to Part 2 and Part 3. Part 2 is a discussion of how the Karrami creed began and vanished. Part 3 explains the present day dominance of the Asharite creed.

When your opponents quote you, you will be taken out of context. So history is full of misdirection. Here we go….

Have you heard questions such as “Is Quran created or un-created?”, “Is God everywhere or is God above the Heavens?”, “Is God motionless or can God move?”, “Does God have ears?”, “Does God have a physical body?”, or “Does God’s speech have sound?”?

This was never discussed by the Prophet ﷺ. This was never discussed by the Companions. These are bizarre questions. However you look at it, its weird. So where did these question come from?

Fortunately, we know the answer. This was the type of question that was dominant among Christians in Europe. Specifically, from the Eastern European Christians.

The short answer

If you want the short answer, its in the paragraph below. Its not as interesting as the long answer. The long answer ties in Khalid bin Waleed, the Ummayads, and Christian criticism of the Prophet’s marriage. After all, Yasir Qadhi’s lectures are interesting because of his tangents.

But we are addicted to soundbites, so here is the short answer.

These ideas were originally from Plato and Aristotle. They spread to early Christians. And they were inherited by a famous Christian priest — John of Damascus. And then they spread to Jad bin Dirham, a Muslim who gets executed for political reasons. And then they spread to everyone else.

Who’s side are you on?

Vast majority of Sunni Islam believes “Quran is not created.” And then you have the Muatazilite ideology, that believes “Quran is created.” This includes Muslims in Oman, who are known as Ibadis. This includes Twelver Shia. The first person to ever propagate these ideas among Muslims was Jad bin Dirham.

Eastern vs Western Christianity

Chrisitianity in Europe divided into two major strands: Western and Eastern. For the most part, Muslims did not interact with Western Christianity. Muslims dealt with the Byzantines. Furthermore, the Western Christians later split into Protestant and Catholic.

When the early Muslims conquered Syria, they conquered territory that was previously controlled by Eastern Chrisitians. Muslims never really interacted with Western Christianity until the Crusades began.

Early Christian debates about God’s attributes

Debates about the nature of God are only found among Christians. This is not found in the Jewish faith. It is not found in any other world religion. It is a very Christian debate.

Christians had the Jesus question. Is Jesus God? Is Jesus the same as God? Are they one or two? Or three? One essence or two essence? What about the Holy Spirit? What about Logos? (YQ theorizes that even the word Kalam in Arabic is derived from the Greek word for Logos!) Logos refers to the “Word of God”. Virtually all Muslim scholars agree that kalam literally means “speech”, referring to the debates about the “speech” of God.

These debates were the result of Plato’s philosophies merging with Christian theology.

The Jewish faith didn’t have debates about such topics. They had sectarianism over different issues. They had debates over law or the concept of predestination. In fact, the first Jews to debate over God’s attributes were Jewish scholars in Muslim lands!

As a side point, Jews were not allowed freedoms in Europe, but Jews were given significant freedoms in Muslim lands. During the time, most of the great Jewish minds came from Muslim lands. Yasir Qadhi lists these scholars. I don’t know any of them, but I will take his word for it. He seems like he knows what he is talking about.

It all starts with John of Damascus

John of Damascus was born in 675 CE. For context, this is when Muawiyah (R) was leading the Ummayads. John was a Christian priest. His ideas about God would influence Jad bin Dirham. Jad was executed, but Jad’s ideas later evolved into Muatazilite theology. After Jad, its worth noting that Jahm bin Safwan is also spread these ideas.

John came from a well-established Damascus family. John’s grandfather was a key player in negotiating the surrender of Damascus to the Khalid bin Waleed (R). John’s father was an adviser to Abdel-Malik bin Marwan. When Ummayads conquered Byzantine territory, they adopted Christian bureaucracies to govern. And then they added their own influences to it.

John was the first person to ever write an academic refutation of Islam, that is still preserved. Its called “Heresy of the Ismailites”. His ideas became mainstream. The idea that the Prophet ﷺ studied with an Aryan monk came from him. He was the first to make a controversy out of the multiple marriages of the Prophet (S). Interestingly, the idea that the Prophet ﷺ married several times was never controversial during the time of the Prophet ﷺ. Not even among the Prophet’s enemies. But John the Baptist sparked the controversy, and it lasts to this day.

John’s theology was inspired by Phylos and Pseudo-Dionysius. Jad lived in the same neighborhood of Damascus as John the Baptist. They lived during the same time frame. They are both learned men. When John was in 70s, Jad was probably a young man in his 30s. They use the same terminology. They preached similar ideas and asked similar questions. We don’t have hard evidence that they communicated to each other, but its inevitable they did meet.

Proving God through logic

Some of these ideas still are discussed today. They are beneficial too. One of these is the proof of God’s existence.

The proof is actually simple. Everything has a cause to it. And every cause is caused by a cause before that. So there must be an original uncaused cause. That “uncaused cause” is called God.

Ibn Taymiyyah felt this was not the best argument to prove God’s existence. He proved Allah through the fitrah argument, but that’s another topic.

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