A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ According to Shaykh Nur ad-Din  Abu ‘Ubadah   ‘Ali ibn Juma’ah, when we consider the positions championed by the Khwarij and the Murji’ah , lexically, “ khuruj ” denotes “insurrection” and “insubordination”.   The active participle, “ khawarij ”, refers to those who rebelled against Sayyidina ‘Ali ibn Abu Thalib ( k.w. ).   The movement originated at the murder of Sayyidina Abu ‘Amr ‘Utsman ibn ‘Affan ( r.a. ), and the allegiance pledged to Sayyidina ‘Ali ( k.w. ) as caliph.   Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan, then governor of Syro-Palestine, refused to acknowledge this allegiance owed, accusing him instead of covering over the murder of Sayyidina ‘Utsman ( r.a. ).   Thereafter, Sayyidina ‘Ali ( k.w. ) and Mu’awiyah faced each other at the Battle of Siffin and the latter would have been routed, but that Sayyidina ‘Amr ibn al-‘Aasw ( r.a. ) enjoined his forces to hoist up copies of the Qur’an on their lances, invoking the aut...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The Murji’ah were an early sect.  Their eponymous key tenet of irja’ , lexically denotes “postponement”, takhir , because they “deferred” the requital of transgressions to the Day of Judgement.  It is imperative to differentiate the position of this sect from that of certain early companions and followers who, responding to the conditions of their time, forbade engaging the bitter contemporaneous political struggles.  In that vein, they recommended “deferring” the case of grave sinners to Allah (s.w.t.), Who will Punish or Forgive them as He Wills on the Day of Judgement.   In the subsequent period, however, there emerged the Murji’ah , who took this notion of deferral to its limit and made it a point of doctrine.  They, thus, held that sin does not spoil faith much like obedience does not benefit disbelief, that is, that the believer remains a believer no matter the enormities of sins he commits, just as the disbeliever r...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The following is taken from “An Introduction to Kalam , Islamic Theology” by Shaykh Nur ad-Din Abu ‘Ubadah ‘Ali ibn Juma’ah.   This brief treatise comprises an introduction to the study of the science of kalam , one of the most important disciplines of Islamic knowledge.   It will suffice to introduce its major branches and comprehend some of the problems it seeks to address, and then note the positions of certain scholars and schools on these problems.   In the linguistic sense, “ kalam ”, “speech”, denotes a word indicating a certain meaning.   In its technical sense, “ kalam ” denotes the theoretical consideration of matters of religious creed, or theology.   Shaykh Wali ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun ( r.a. ) said, “It is the discipline comprised of disputation over credal beliefs with rational proofs.”   Imam al-‘Ayhi ( r.a. ) said, “ Kalam is the discipline that enables one to affirm credal ...