The Karramiyyyah & the Hashwiyyah Anthropomorphists

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Tashbih is the position that there are similarities beyond analogies between Allah (s.w.t.) and His Creation.  Tajsim is the related position that imputes a bodily form to Allah (s.w.t.).  Tashbih emerged before Islam among certain Jewish and Christian sects, and then spread to certain radical sects in Muslim lands; its more prominent proponents include certain Shi’ah groups, the Karramiyyah, and the Hashwiyyah.  It is based on a particular understanding of those scriptural verses whose apparent meaning expresses similarities between Allah (s.w.t.) and Creation. 

The Shi’ah ghuluw, extremists, who took such a position include Mughirah bin Sa’id, who claimed that the one he worshipped was a man of light with a crown upon his head and limbs, unlike a man; and Bayan bin Sam’an, who maintained that the one he worshipped was a human being enveloped in light but for his face. 

The Karramiyyyah were named after Muhammad ibn Karam as-Sijistani, who affirmed the Divine Attributes but in a corporealising and anthropomorphising fashion.  He called his followers to worship an embodied, delimited god.  In his book, “The Punishment of the Grave,” he described Allah (s.w.t.) as seated proudly upon the Throne in terms that admit movement, change, and cessation, much like he affirmed the beatific vision without securing the doctrine against its potential spatial implications. 

The Hashwiyyah, finally, are those who cling to an extremely literal hermeneutic, and so insist on the apparent sense of those verses that could imply similarities between Allah (s.w.t.) and Creation.  Imam Muhammad ‘Ala ibn ‘Ali at-Tahanawi (r.a.) recorded, in his book, Kashf Iswthilahat al-Funun, that the Hashwiyyah clung to apparent meanings until they corporealised their theology, and further.  Some assimilated them into various Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah groups, especially the later Hanbalis, of whom we may give examples of scholars who appear to adopt the Hashwiyyah hermeneutic; but great numbers of other Hanbalis, including Imam Abu al-Faraj ‘Abd ar-Rahman ibn ‘Ali ibn al-Jawzy (r.a.) vociferously rejected it in the fourth and fifth centuries.  Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal (r.a.) himself never anthropomorphised but, rather, urged tafwid, a specific kind of relegation, which as practiced by certain early Muslims is simply refusing to comment on such matters.