Thursday, February 28, 2013

The New Jabriyyah


Those whom I have taken to calling "neo-Jabriyyah" or "crypto-Jabriyyah":

Those who perpetrate questionable acts on the justification that Allah's Divine Decree (al-Qadr), or plan for creation, cannot be violated anyway. Implying but not stating outright (hence the prefix crypto-) that it thus absolves them of responsibility for their actions since the consequences are determined by Allah.

For example, chasing away potential converts on the pretext that if Allah chooses to guide them, then none can lead them astray.

This can be consistently or inconsistently applied. For another example which appears to contradict itself on the surface, aiming to achieve short term ends by using "the ends justify the means" logic while disregarding long term ends or vice-versa (focusing on long term ends at the expense of short term consequences). Either way, the set of ignored consequences, regardless of how arbitrarily they are chosen, are always ignored on the pretext of fatalism.

Neo-Jabriyyah would be those who openly harbor such beliefs but could also refer to those who hide them (crypto-Jabriyyah). One can observe a degree of this strain of thought running as an undercurrent in much extremist philosophy.

The original Jabriyyah were the school of Jahm ibn Safwan. They were influenced by pantheistic/atheistic/humanistic schools of Hindu philosophy (Sumaniya and Ajivikas). His followers eventually became deniers of the divine attributes and outright pantheists known as the Jahmiyyah. Jahm learned from his teacher, Ja'd ibn Durham, who invented the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur'an, which the Mu'tazilah later adopted. Some of them also adopted Neoplatonism in their pantheist theology.