This week I had the honor of joining Professor John Vervaeke on his new series Silk Road Seminars to speak about Islamic Neoplatonism. For those who do not know, Professor Vervaeke is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Vervaeke has been very vocal about the “Meaning Crisis” and often speaks about reviving Neoplatonism as a serious worldview and thought paradigm for people today.

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Our lengthy discussion covered the following themes and topics in Islamic Neoplatonism:

1. Neoplatonism as a living tradition for Muslims

2. ⁠Neoplatonic interpretations of Islamic prayers (PDF of my article “Neoplatonic Prayer)

3. ⁠Muslim views of pre-Islamic religious traditions

4. ⁠Muslim Dhikr as Neoplatonic contemplation

5. ⁠Petitionary Prayer and Intercessory Prayer in Islamic Neoplatonism (PDF of my article “Neoplatonic Prayer)

6. ⁠Neoplatonism and objective reality

7. ⁠Cosmological Arguments for Neoplatonic Hypostases (my lecture arguing for Neoplatonic hypostases)

8. ⁠The One as the explanation for dependent existence

9. ⁠Intellect as the explanation for intelligibility and eternal necessary truth (Forms)

10. ⁠The Intellect (Nous) eternally proceeds from the One by necessity (PDF of my article on God’s creation being necessary)

11. ⁠The Command of God or Pure Existence as the direct emanation from the One that flows in all existents

12. ⁠How the “trace” or light” of the One is within all beings

13. ⁠The Soul as the source or arche of intelligible and teleological motion

14. ⁠How Neoplatonism is alive for Ismaili Muslims today

However, Salafis consider istighatha to be a form of shirk (joining partners with God). Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1703–1792), the founder of the Wahhabi-Salafi movement and Ibn Bāz (1912–1999), the former Salafi Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia have written: “Calling upon the dead, asking for their help, or offering them gifts or sacrifices are all forms of shirk. Setting up intermediaries (wasāʾiṭ) between oneself and God, making supplication to them, or asking their intercession with God is unbelief (kufr) by the consensus of the community.”^[3] The consequence of this patently Wahhabi theological position and legal ruling is that any Muslim who calls upon a created being for help, aid, or blessing—such as saying Yā ʿAlī madad, Yā Rasūl Allāh adriknī, or Yā ʿAbd al-Qādir madad—is committing idolatry (shirk) and is outside the fold of Islam.^[4]

The Wahhabi-Salafi position has become popular today among lay Muslims who have often unknowingly imbibed Wahhabi theology in their religious education. The modern popularity of what used to be a strictly Wahhabi position is most ironic because the historical majority of Muslims, both Sunni and Shiʿi, permit or encourage the practice of seeking God’s blessings through the spiritual mediation of the Prophet Muhammad, the ahl al-bayt, and the Saints or Friends of God (awliyāʾ Allāh). This devotional Muslim practice, in the views of most Muslims across time and space, can never constitute shirk because the Prophets, Imams, and Saints are being invoked as dependent and created spiritual intermediaries who channel or distribute God’s blessings as opposed to being worshiped as independent necessary agents. If such a practice was tantamount to idolatry and unbelief, this would entail that the mass of Muslims across time and space have been committing major shirk.

Nevertheless, on social media there continues to be raging debate between various Muslim influencers from various shades of Salafism and Sunnism on the status of istighatha.

As part of an ongoing research project, I and my research assistant Abdullah Ansar of Carleton College are compiling a list of Sunni legal and theological opinions on the permissibility of istighatha from Sunni ‘ulama’. Many of the Sunni references cited below were first published on “Twitter/X” amidst an ongoing debate between modern-day Salafis and traditional Sunni Muslims. We wish to acknowledge two Sunni Twitter/X handles for first bringing our attention to some of these sources: “@d1mashqi” and “@ibnekhan01”. All translations are by us, unless specified. We welcome others to use the citations below as long as they acknowledge this list as their source, which we continue to update over time.

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Sunni Scholars Permitting Istighātha (Intercessory Prayer)

Prepared by Dr. Khalil Andani (Augustana College) and Abdullah Ansar (Carleton College)

Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal [164-241/780-885] is reported to have said: “O Slaves of Allah, guide me to the path!”

ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, ed. Zuhaīr Shāwīsh (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1981), 245.

Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī [384-458/994-1066] reports a tradition about a man in Medina who used to say:

“O the grave of the Prophet and his two Companions!

O the one we ask for help, if you knew!”

Abū Bakr Aḥmad Ibn Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī, al-Jāmiʿ li Shuʿab al-Īmān, ed. Mukhtār Aḥmad, 14 vols. (Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2003), 6:60, no. 3879.

Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn ʿAlī al-Jawzī [510-597/1116 -1201] narrates that Abū Bakr al-Muqrī said: “O Prophet! Hunger! Hunger!”

Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jawzī. al-Wafā bi-Aḥwāl al-Muṣṭafā, ed. Muḥammad Zuhayrī, 2 vols. (Riyāḍ: al-Mu’asassa al-Saʿīdiyya bi l-Riyāḍ, n.d.), 2:559.

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī [544–606/1149–1209] mentions that there are respects in which the dead are stronger than those who are alive and can benefit them:

“Indeed, those souls which have separated from their bodies are stronger than those souls still connected to their bodies in several respects… When a person goes to the grave of a human being who is strong in his soul and perfect in substance and strong in influence, and he/they remain there for a time, his soul is influenced from that earth and the soul of the visitors obtain a connection to that earth.”

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya, ed. Aḥmad Ḥijāzī, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987). 7:276.

Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī [541-620/1147-1223] permits istighātha through the Prophet and the Friends of God.

“They [the Saints] are a sanctuary for the people when matters become difficult for them. Thus, the kings and those of lesser status seek to visit them and seek blessings through their prayers and seek their intercession with God.”

Abū Muḥammad ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī. Taḥrīm al-naẓar fī kutub al-kalām, edited by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad Saʿīd Dimashqiyya (Riyāḍ: Dār ʿAlām al-Kutub, 1990), 40.

He recommended that people address the Prophet at his grave as follows: “I have come to you [the Prophet] seeking forgiveness for my sins, and seeking your intercession near my Lord. So I ask you, O my Lord, that you deem my forgiveness necessary, as you did during his [the Prophet’s life].”

Abū Muḥammad Ibn Qudāmah, Al-Mughnī (Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawliyya, 2004), 795, tr. Cameron Zargar, in “Origins of Wahhabism from Hanbali fiqh,” in Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 16.1 (2017), 81.

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsa ibn al-Nuʿmān al-Muzālī [607–683/1210–1284] wrote a complete work on istighātha through the Prophet. In this work he mentions numerous Qur’ānic verses and prophetic reports to support istighātha.

al-Muzālī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn al-Nuʿmān. Miṣbāḥ al-Ẓalām, ed. Ḥusayn Muḥammad ʿAlī, (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyah, 2004.

Najm al-Dīn Abū Rabīʿ al-Ṭūfī [657–716/1259–1316] noted that al-Muzālī’s work was famous in Egypt and gained widespread scholarly agreement (al-ijmāʿ) and the permissibility of istighātha was also accepted through scholarly agreement.

Najm al-Dīn Abū Rabīʿ al-Ṭūfī, al-Ishārāt al-Ilāhiyya, ed. Abū ʿĀṣim Ḥasan, 3 vols. (Cairo: al-Fārūq al-Ḥadītha, 2002), 3:91.

Ibn al-Ḥajj al-ʿAbdarī [656–736/1258–1336] argues that istighātha is permissible and that there is no problem in asking the Prophet for help since the Prophet is the Pole of Perfection:

“Whoever seeks mediation (tawassala) through him, does istigātha through him or seeks his needs from him, he will not perish and he will not be disappointed.”

Ibn al-Ḥajj al-ʿAbdarī, al-Madkhal (Cairo: Maktab al-Dār al-Turāth, n.d.), 1:257.

Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī [673–748/1274–1348] reports the same anecdote about Abū Bakr al-Muqrī saying: “O Prophet! Hunger! Hunger!”

Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ. ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaut, 30 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risāla, 2011), 16:401.

Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī [683–756/1284–1355] argued that no scholar before Ibn Taymiyya argued for the impermissibility of istighātha. He defended istigātha through the Prophet:

“Know that intermediation (tawassul), seeking assistance (istigātha), and intercession through the Prophet unto his Lord, may He be praised and exalted, is permitted and praiseworthy. Their being permitted and praiseworthy is a matter well-known to every religious person, reputed among the actions of the Prophets and Messengers and the lives of the righteous ancestors, as well as the scholars and laymen among the Muslims. Nobody among the people of religions denied it nor did they hear about it in any time period until Ibn Taymiyya came along and spoke about it by casting doubt upon the weak and he invocated something which has no precedent in history.”

“Thus, God is one whose help is sought (al-mustagāth) and help sought from Him is by way of creation and existentiation and the Prophet is one whose help is sought and help sought from him is by way of non-causal mediation (tasabbub) and acquisition (kasb).”

Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī, al-Shifā’ al-Saqām fī ziyāra khayr al-anam, ed. al-Sayyd Muḥammad Riḍā al-Ḥusaynī al-Jalālī, 4th ed. (1998), 293-315.

Shāh Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband Bukhārī [d. 791/1389] recited the following poem:

“O Lion of Allāh, Amīr Ĥaydar, [grant me] triumph!

O Conqueror of the Fort at Khaybar, [grant me] triumph!”

The doors of hope have closed upon me,

O Master of Dhu al-Fiqar and Qanbar, [grant me] triumph!”

Muḥammad Ṣadiq Qasūrī, Ruʿbāyāt-i Naqshband, (Lahore: al-Madinah Publications, 1997), 29.

Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd Ibn ʿUmar al-Taftāzānī [722–792 /1322–1390] mentions that those who are dead have certain capacities that they did not possess when they were alive. Based on this, Istighātha from good departed souls is permissible.

“What is apparent from the principles of Islam (qawāʿid al-Islām) is that the renewed perception of particulars exists for the after separation (from the body) and the awareness of some of the particulars of the states of the living. This especially pertains to those between whom and the dead there was a familiarity in the world. For this reason, one benefits from visitation to the graves and seeking help of the virtuous souls among the deceased with respect to the passing of information and the warding off of adversities. There is a relationship between the departed soul and the body and the soil in which it is buried. When the living person visits that soil and directs his soul to meeting the soul of the deceased, there obtains a meeting and a relation between the two souls.”

Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftazānī, Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, 5 vols. (Qum: al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, 1989), III, 338.

Abū Ḥafs Sirāj al-Dīn al-Bulqīnī [724–805/1324–1403] cites a tradition of the Prophet where a companion asks the Prophet for his neighborhood in paradise, and using this tradition, he defends a poem that includes similar istighātha.

Abū Ḥafs Sirāj al-Bulqīnī, al-Tajarrud wa al-Ihtimām bi-Jamʿ Fatāwa Shaykh al-Islām, ed. Ḥamza Muḥammad, (Arūqah, n.d.), 3:217.

Abū Bakr al-Marāghī [727-816 /1327-1413] permits both tawassul and istighātha through the Prophet in all states of his existence:

“Tawassul, istighātha, and intercession through the Prophet, God’s peace and blessings be upon him, occurs in every situation before his creation, during his life, after his death in the era of the barzakh, after the rising [from the graves], and the open space of Resurrection.”

Abū Bakr al-Marāghī, Taḥqīq al-Nuṣrah, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Jawwād (Cairo: Dār al-Maktab al-Miṣriyya, 1955), 113.

Taqī al-Dīn al-Ḥuṣnī [752–829/1351–1426] mentions that seeking help from the Prophet is permissible. He also cites multiple anecdotes where people sought help from the Prophet and the Prophet replied to their prayers.

Taqī al-Dīn al-Ḥuṣnī. Dafʿ Shubh Man Shubbaha wa Tamarrada (Cairo: al-Maktabat al-Azhariyyah li-Turāth, n.d.), 133.

Shihāb al-Dīn Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī [773–852/1372–1449], in his poetic compilation, asks the Prophet directly for help and the command to enter paradise.

Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Dīwān Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, ed. Firdaws ʿAlī Ḥusayn, Cairo: Dār al-Faḍīla, 2000), 124.

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī [849– 911/1445–1505] reports that he asked the Prophet for help against a tyrannical ruler who seized the land of people. His prayer was answered and the ruler was ‘killed by God’. He also recommended saying “Yā ʿAbd al-Qādir ten times and then to seek your need.”

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Kitāb Ḥusn al-Muḥāḍara, 2 vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyā’ l-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1967-68), 2:15, 2:234.

Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qasṭallānī [851-923/1448-1517] deems asking the Prophet for help necessary when visiting the grave of the Prophet. He says:

“There is no difference between the expressions istighātha, tawassul, tashaffuʿ or tawajjuh because they are all aspects of the same thing.”

Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qasṭallānī, al-Muwāhib al-Ladunniyya, ed. Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad al-Shāmī, 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 2004), 4:593.

Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ramlī [d. 957/1550] gives a ruling that istigātha through the Prophets and Friends of God is permissible;

“Seeking help (al-istighātha) through the Prophets, Messengers, Saints, scholars, and the righteous is permissible because the Messengers, Saints, and the righteous grant help after their deaths because the miracles of the Prophets and the supernatural gifts of the Saints are not cut off with their death.”

Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Ramlī, Fatāwā al-Ramlī. 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, n.d.), Vol. 4, 362.

Shihāb al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ḥajar al-Haytamī [909-974/1503-1566] argues that there is no difference between tawassul and istighātha through the Prophet and that both are acceptable to the Muslims.

“There is no difference between the mention of intermediation (tawassul), seeking assistance (istighātha), intercession, and attention (tawajjuh) through him [the Prophet] and other Prophets and likewise for the Saints… Istigātha is to seek help and the seeker of help (al-mustagīth) seeks from one whose help is sought (al-mustagāth) to obtain for him from other than him, even if he is higher than him. Thus, attention and istigātha through him [the Prophet] and through others has no meaning other than this in acceptance of the Muslims.”

Ibn Hajar al-Makkī al-Haytamī, Kitāb al-Jawhar al-Munaẓẓam fī ziyārat al-qabr al-sharīf al-nabawī al-mukarram (Cairo: Makbata Madbūlī, 2000), 111.

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith al-Dihlawī [958-1052/1551-1642] records in Akhbār al-Akhyār from Shaykh Bahāʾ Dīn Ibn Ibrāhīm ʿAṭāullāh al-Anṣārī al-Shaṭṭārī [d. 921/1516] that he writes in his work al-Risāla al-Shaṭṭāriyyah:

“The remembrance (dhikr) for the unveiling of the Spirit - O Muḥammad and O Aḥmad - have two ways. The first one is to recite O Aḥmad on the right side, O Muḥammad on the left side, and to imagine O Muṣṭafa in the heart. The second way is to recite O Aḥmad, O Muḥammad, O ʿAlī, O Ḥassan, O Ḥusayn, and O Fātima in six directions. After this, all spirits would be unveiled.”

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith al-Dihlawī, Akhbār al-Akhyār (Lahore: Akbar Booksellers, 2004), 415.

Shāh Waliyullāh [1114-1176/1703-1762] mentions in Intibāh fī Salāsil Awliyā Allāh that the spiritual masters in his chain would recommend reading Jawāhir-i Khamsa, a Persian work on Sufi meditation practices. A part of Jawāhir includes Nādi ʿAlī which reads:

“Call ʿAlī, call ʿAlī who is the locus of manifestation of wonders. You will find him an effective supporter for you in all calamities. All worries and sorrows will soon disappear by your greatness O God, by your Prophethood O Muhammad, and by your walāya O ʿAlī! O ʿAlī! O ʿAlī!”

Shāh Waliyullāh, “Intibāh fī Salāsil Awliyā Allāh”, in Rasail-i Shāh Waliyullāh Dihlawī (Tasawwuf Foundation, 1999), 1:239.

Ibn ʿĀbidīn [1198-1252/1784-1836] recited a prayer asking for the Prophet’s help (“Help me O Messenger of God” (adriknī Yā Rasūl Allāh) and reported stories of Muslim scholars of seeking the Prophet’s help and blessing hundreds of times to obtain the resolution of their difficulties.

Muḥammad Amīn b. ʿUmar b. ʿĀbidīn (Ibn ʿĀbidīn), Thabat Ibn ʿĀbidīn al-musammá ʿUqūd al-la’ālī fī al-asānīd al-ʿawālī (Dār al-Bashā’ir al-Islāmiyyah lil-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2010), 484.

Aḥmad Riḍā Khān [1272-1340/1856-1921] writes in Umūr-i ʿIshrīn Dar ʿAqāid-i Sunniyīn:

“To seek help and aid from the Prophets and Friends (of God), to call upon them or make them a medium at the time of need saying: O Prophet, ‘O ʿAlī, O Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and to believe them to be a means of attaining blessings from Allāh is definitely correct and permissible.”

Aḥmad Riḍā Khān, Parameter of Salvation: Umūr-i ʿIshrīn Dar Imtiyāz-i ʿAqāʾid-i Sunniyyīn, 3rd Edition (Ridawi Translations Project, 2017), 12.

Qāḍī Yūsuf al-Nabhānī [1265-1350/1849-1932] argues for the legitimacy and permissibility of istigātha throughout his Shawāhid al-Haqq. He himself recited the prayer “help me O Messenger of God (adriknī yā Rasūl Allāh)” over a thousand times to solve his difficulty:

“I sought assistance (istaghathtu) through the Prophet (bi l-nabī) from God to relieve me of that difficulty the occurrence of this affair is only through the blessing (baraka) of the Prophet, seeking assistance (istighātha) from God through him, and invoking blessings upon him.”

The sixth chapter of this work is titled “On the transmission of narrations and reports received from the scholars and the righteous about the benefits that obtain for them from seeking the help (al-istighātha) through the Master of the Messengers.”

Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, Shawāhid al-Haqq, ed. ʿAbd al-Wārith Muḥammad ʿAlī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2007), 248.

[1] “God in Islam,” in Wikipedia.

[2] Asad, Muhammad, The road to Mecca, London: The Book Company, 2014, 239.

[3] Rippin, Andrew, “Islam and the politics of violence,” in David J. Hawkin (ed.), Twenty-first century confronts its Gods, Albany: SUNY Press, 2004, 134–135.

[4] Bunzel, Cole M., Wahhābism: The history of a militant Islamic movement, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023, 44–45, 120–122, 128–130.

The Islamic Dilemma is an internal critique presented by Christian missionaries to undermine the religion of Islam. A typical rendition of the Dilemma is as follows:

1. The Qur’an confirms the divine inspiration, authority, and preservation of the Old Testament and New Testament.

2. The Qur’an contradicts the teachings of the Old and New Testament with regard to the Triune God, the deity of Christ, the vicarious atonement, etc.

3. If the Qur’an is true, the Old and New Testament are true.

4. The Qur’an is false due to contradicting itself.

The video begins with my 20 minute opening statement, where I lay out the so-called Islamic Dilemma, outline 3 possible solutions, and expound my preferred solution. In particular, my strategy is to attack and disprove premise 1 by showing the Qur’an does not recognize the New Testament or the Four Gospel Canon of the Christians as authentic revelation; rather I maintain based on Qur’anic evidence that the Qur’an only recognizes the Gospel message that God revealed to Jesus, which Jesus preached historically, as authentic revelation while also accusing Jews and Christians of corrupting the revelation they received by mixing it with falsehood and misinterpretation.

1. What is God’s Speech per Ash‘aris

2. How God reveals His Speech per Ash‘aris

3. Problems with Ash‘ari Theology

4. God’s Voluntary Attributes (Actions) per Ibn Taymiyya

5. God’s Speech qua Qur’an as temporal per Ibn Taymiyya

6. God’s Uncreated Qur’an vs. Human Sounds per Ibn Taymiyya

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The most enigmatic element of Ismaili apophatic theology is the infamous claim that God is ‘beyond being’, that is God is not existent (ays, mawjūd, hast) and God is not non-existent (lays, maʿdūm, nīst). This distinctive Ismaili position appears to be the low-hanging fruit for Muslims of competing theological schools to attack and ridicule. Certain Muslim theologians (mutakallimūn) and traditionalists, both past and present, have accused this Ismaili teaching of violating the rules of logic or professing atheism.

For starters, in Aristotelian logic, it is perfectly sound to make statements in which two contrary opposites are negated from a subject; this does not result in logical contradiction. For example, the number 2 is neither heavy nor light; dogs are neither even nor odd; ideas are neither wet nor dry. Many such negations apply to God as understood by most theologians: God is neither dry nor wet; God is neither healthy nor sick; God is neither inside the Universe nor is He outside the Universe. The point of these “double negations” is to point out a category error: both of the negated attributes - such as healthy and sick - do not apply to God because they only apply to physical living things. There is no contradiction here because the two negated terms are contraries. In this very respect, the Ismaili semantic framework regards ‘existence’ (aysiyya, hastī, wujūd) and non-existence (laysiyya, nīstī, ʿadam) as contraries but not as contradictories.

A proper and good-faith assessment of the Ismaili claim that ‘God is beyond existence and non-existence’ must account for the semantics of the word ‘being/existence’ within Ismaili discourse, Neoplatonic thought, and Islamic thought more generally. In fact, the nature of ‘being’ and its relation to concrete ‘beings’ was a highly disputed and nuanced issue in Islamic intellectual history. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī (d. 886/1492) in his Precious Pearl outlines several positions taken by Islamic theologians, philosophers, and mystics. One group, identified with some of the kalām theologians, said that every entity – including God and creatures – has its own specific existence unique unto itself and that the term ‘existence’ is only applied to various entities in name only (lafẓan). Another group of theologians, the majority, conceives existence as a single concept or idea (mafhūm wāḥid) in the mind, which is then mentally subdivided into similar concepts and attributed to various things. The view of the philosophers is that there is a single mental concept of existence but in external reality, each existing thing has its own specific existence (wujūd khāṣṣa) – entailing multiple existences of dissimilar realities (al-wujūdāt al-mukhtalifat al-ḥaqā’iq) in extra-mental reality – each of which is a ‘concomitant accident’ (ʿāriḍ lāzim lahā) attached to an essence/quiddity. The Sufis, however, affirm that there is One Absolutely Single Existent Reality (ḥaqīqa wāḥida muṭlaqa mawjūda), namely God Himself, who is without any multiplicity, division or entitative attributes; everything other than God, namely the creations, is the locus of a particularized manifestation (ẓuhūr) of God qua Absolute Existence.[1] What the Ismailis present concerning existence/being and its relationship to God should be situated within this broader intra-Muslim debate about ontology.

For Plotinus and his followers, the One transcends both being (enai) and substance (ousia); these notions do not apply to God. Does this mean that Plotinus denies the existence of the One? Recently scholars of Neoplatonic studies have attended to this issue and there is an emerging interpretation of Plotinus holding that he does not deny the ‘existence’ of the One according to our modern understandings of ‘exists’. Rather, in the Greek semantics assumed by Plotinus, the verb ‘to be’ has the primary function of predication, with the meaning of ‘to be something or another’; the same verb only takes on an existential value (with the meaning ‘to exist) in very specific secondary contexts.[2] Based on this finding of Khan, Wiitala and DiRado clarify that “in claiming the One is beyond being (to, enai), Plotinus does not mean that the One does not exist, since the existence of the One is the foundation for the existence of everything else. Instead, Kahn argues that Plotinus’ denial of being to the One only entails that the One cannot be a subject of true predication.’[3] Therefore, when Neoplatonists say that God is beyond existence, they only mean to say that God cannot be the subject of any real predications – since real predications denote some determinate finite feature and ontological plurality in the One. Wiitala and DiRadio further conclude that Plotinus does not subscribe to a univocal concept of existence/being – as modern analytics tend to; to speak of the One as ‘existing’ is to speak equivocally about ‘His existence’ which transcends the existences of everything else:

The One does not exist in the way a Form exists – as a subject of real predication – or that a sensible particular exists – as a subject of true but ambiguous predication. To infer from this that the existence of the One can be straightforwardly denied, however, is completely unwarranted, and would be the mistake engendered (sic) by the modern univocal understanding of existence. The One exists, has hypostasis, as the principle underlying the things that it causes (unity, goodness, being, etc.) while nevertheless remaining beyond all real predication.[4]

Given how closely the Ismailis follow Plotinus’ worldview, the above clarification suffices to rebut the charge that Ismaili philosophers, in exalting God beyond being and nonbeing, are agnostic or atheistic with respect to God. However, it is worth examining how the Ismailis understand the semantics of existence/being when they deny that God ‘exists’ or that He is ‘a being’.

The Ismaili thinkers al-Sijistānī and al-Kirmānī mostly use terms like ays (existent, being), aysiyya (existence), lays (non-existent, not-being), and laysiyya (non-existence), which come from the circle of al-Kindī. For al-Sijistānī, God is not an ays (existent, being), but rather, He is the mu’ayyis, meaning He is ‘the giver of existence’ (aysiyya) through His eternal creative act of command (amr) – which is the ‘existentiation (ta’yīs) of the existents (aysāt) from the non-existent (lays)’.[5] Al-Kirmānī writes that ‘the existent (al-ays) in its being an existent (fī kawnihi aysan) is in need of what it depends upon in existence.’[6] For Nāṣir-i Khuraw writing in Persian, the terms hast (existent) and hastī (existence) carry the meaning of contingent existent – that which considered in itself may exist or not exist: ‘Whatever has existence (harcha hastī dārad) may also be non-existent (nīst) as a contrary (ḍidd). That to which ‘existent’ (hast) does not apply, it is also not appropriate to call it non-existent. This is because both of them [existence and non-existence] are mutual contraries and whatever has a contrary cannot be God.’[7] For al-Sijistānī, al-Kirmānī, and Khusraw the term ‘existent’ (ays, hast) always has the meaning of contingent, dependent and originated beings. Thus, when they say that God is neither existent (ays, mawjūd, hast) nor non-existent (lays, maʿdūm, nīst), these Ismaili philosophers are only stating that God is not dependent on anything and not limited; whereas every ‘existent’ depends upon God.

Furthermore, many Ismailis conceive ‘existence’ (aysiyya, hastī) as a super-genus that subsumes the various types of things such as substances and accidents, bodies and spirits, form and matter, etc. Thus, whatever belongs to the category of existence must either be a substance or an accident. Since God transcends being a substance or an accident (both of which entail finitude), it is inappropriate to say God is an existent. Even if one wanted to say God is an existent in a unique manner other than substances and accidents, this would require that God is a species of existence comprised of the existence genus and a differentia; this entails ontological composition in God, violates divine simplicity, and renders God dependent upon the conjunction of the existence genus and a differentia.[8] On this reading of ‘existence’, the Ismailis are in complete agreement with Plotinus, for whom the term ‘exists’ entails the limits of form and substance: ‘Plotinus is denying that the One has the sort of metaphysical structure that all beings or substances (ousiai) have… This mutual entailment between being and being something is what leads Plotinus to say that the One is beyond being.’[9]

Al-Sijistānī and al-Kirmānī refuse to classify God as a mawjūd (a being) or what possesses wujūd (being) for similar reasons. Al-Sijistānī understands the terms wujūd / mawjūd in the literal sense of ‘finding’ / ‘what is found’. From this meaning, he argues that it is inappropriate for God to be a mawjūd (something found) because this requires that there be an eternal ‘finder’ (wājid) whose object of action is God; this is absurd because God cannot be the patient or direct objection of the act of any agent. If one maintains that the ‘finder’ is some temporal being who ‘finds’ God as its mawjūd, this entails that prior to this act of ‘finding’ (wujūd), God was a mawjūd and therefore, wujūd does not apply to God regardless.[10] For al-Kirmānī, wujūd is an attribute and the general argument for negating any entitative attribute from God applies to wujūd as well. It is either the case that the attribute of wujūd depends upon God, in which case God is self-subsistent and independent of the attribute of wujūd, which is a creation, has no need for it – which means God is not really a wujūd or mawjūd; or God Himself depends upon the attribute of wujūd for His subsistence, which makes God dependent like creatures and leads to an infinite regress of dependency which is impossible.

The Ismailis’ outright refusal to speak of God as an existent within the category of existence or a being among other beings is to drive home the ontological incommensurability between God and created beings: ‘He, the Exalted, is beyond being an existent (aysan) due to the need of the existent, in being existent, of that which precedes it who makes it exist; thus, it is absurd that He, the Exalted, should be an existent (aysan) when He has no need of another to be Himself and does not depend upon another.’[11] This surely cannot be interpreted as a profession of agnosticism or atheism, except by an intentional misreading of their words. In fact, given the difficulty of dispensing with ‘existence’ language to talk about God, Ismailis employed alternative terminologies to speak of God’s reality or actuality. Al-Sijistānī, Nāṣir-i Khusraw, and al-Shahrastānī, after denying the applicability of ‘existence’ (aysiyya, hastī, wujūd) and non-existence (laysiyya, nīstī, ʿadam) to God, refer to God as the ‘existentiator of existence’ (mu’ayyis, hast-kunanda, hast-karda, hast-āwaranda, mūjid al-wujūd) using active agentive participles.[12] As for ‘absolute existence/being’ (wujūd muṭlaq, hast-i muṭlaq), this is still inapplicable to God because every existent gradationally participates in ‘absolute existence’. Therefore, absolute existence is God’s eternal creative act, His Command or Word, which is both the source of all originated existents and reflected within them in various degrees: ‘Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being (pāyanda buwad), and the light of the Command of God shines in it.’[13] Absolute existence, which is God’s creative act of Command, is not God Himself; rather, it is only the trace or effect (athar) of God and it is ontologically united with the Universal Intellect; nevertheless, God’s Command qua absolute existence subsumes and encompasses all existents in a state of oneness (waḥda).[14]

Al-Sijistānī and al-Kirmānī prefer to speak of God in terms of His ‘subsistence’ (thubūt, thabāt, thābit, ithbāt) instead of His ‘existence’. Al-Sijistānī argues that God is the ‘more subsistent’ (athbat) than everything that subsists. He speaks of God’s ‘subsistence’ (thubūt, ithbāt) as the ‘real-true subsistence’ (al-ithbāt al-ḥaqīqī) and created beings as having only ‘virtual subsistence’ (al-ithbāt al-majāzī). Likewise, al-Kirmānī speaks of God as ‘subsistent’ (thubūt) and a ‘self-subsistent ipseity’ (huwiyya thābita).[15] Thus, the Ismailis seem to use thubūt for God and creatures in an equivocal manner. It is worth noting that the Ismaili preference to speak of ‘subsistence’ (thubūt, thabāt, ithbāt; meaning ‘standing’, ‘stability’) for God’s reality and creaturely subsistence parallels Plotinus’ use of the word ‘hypostasis’ (meaning: ‘standing under’) in an equivocal manner to refer to the One, the Intellect, and other levels of being.[16] Medieval and modern scholarship on Ismaili theology has thus far failed to register the fact that Ismaili thinkers regularly affirm God’s subsistence (thubūt, thabāt, thābit, ithbāt)  – a finding that also rebuts the polemical charge that Ismailis professed agnostic or atheist views.

Al-Kirmānī and al-Shahrastānī do permit one to use terms like wujūd (existence) to speak of God out of verbal necessity to express oneself. But they warned that ‘existence’ may only be used equivocally such that one is not making a real predication concerning God – that He has existence, belongs to the genus of existence, or (as modern analytics love to say) He instantiates the divine nature.[17] Therefore, Ismailis can say ‘God exists’ or speak of God as the ‘Necessary Existence through Himself’ (wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) in colloquial or even specialized contexts but this proposition is not a univocal predication about God; rather, it is the affirmation that God is the existentiator (mūjid) of existents as explained by al-Shahrastānī: ‘He is “existent” (mawjūd) in the sense that He existentialises every existence (mūjid kulli wujūd), is “Necessary of Existence” in the sense that He necessitates every existent (mūjib kulli mawjūd); ‘there is no existentialiser (mūjid) for beings other than God (Exalted is He!), the Necessary of Existence in Himself.’[18] Technically speaking, the Ismailis use ‘existence’ (wujūd) for God as an equivocal term (ism mushtarak). But ‘existence’ is not a ‘pure equivocal’ term – where one word has two wholly unrelated meanings (like ‘bark’ of a tree and ‘bark’ of a dog). Rather, ‘existence’ as used by Ismailis for God is a special kind of equivocal term known to others as an ‘impure equivocal’, ‘paradigmatic equivocal’ or ‘relative analogical term’.[19] Accordingly, the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘trees exist’ have different meanings but the meanings are related in some way. In this case, as used by Ismailis, ‘trees exist’ means ‘trees subsist dependently upon another’ while ‘God exists’ means ‘God subsists independently and in reality (ḥaqīqī) and He makes everything else subsist dependently and virtually (majāzī)’.

The Ismailis are not the only Muslim philosophical school to deny or at least heavily qualify the applicability of the concept of ‘existence’ to God.  Ibn Sīnā is famous for teaching that God is the Necessary Existence in Himself (wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) whereas all created beings are contingent existence (mumkin al-wujūd bi-dhātihi) in itself or necessary existence due to another (wājib al-wujūd li-ghayrihi) because they depend upon God. For Ibn Sīnā, existence (wujūd) is not a univocal term, but rather, it is a modulated term (ism mushakkak). This means that existence refers to a single core concept/meaning but the extra-mental realities that the one concept refers to are differing in many ways such that the single concept does not apply to them equally. For Ibn Sīnā, the term existence applies both to God and created things, but the reality of existence differs among these referents according to ontological worthiness. God, who is existent by virtue of Himself is ‘more deserving’ of existence while created beings, who exist by virtue of another, are less worthy of existence. One interpretation of Ibn Sīnā’s view of ‘existence’ is that it is a ‘modulated’ or ‘analogical’ term, whose meaning is closer to the univocal predication.[20]  This reading of Ibn Sīnā’s ontology would put him at odds with the Ismaili tradition, which holds that existence is an equivocal term. However, upon close examination of his corpus, Ibn Sīnā is not always consistent about which terms in philosophy are equivocal (mushtarak) and which ones are modulated (mushakkak). Thus, Janos argues that Ibn Sīnā regards ‘existence’ (wujūd) as a type of ‘weak equivocal term’ based on a careful examination of his writings. Ibn Sīnā’s predecessors, al-Farābī and Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, also held that existent/existence is an equivocal term (ism mushtarak).[21] In a passage found in one manuscript of Ibn Sīnā’s work, one of Ibn Sīnā’s students who edited his Mubāḥathāt, says that the term wujūd – when used both for God (the First) and for contingent beings – is equivocal: ‘[When one refers to] the First Necessary Existent, one does not intend by this existence the [kind of contingent] existence [characteristic of other beings]. Rather, these usages [of the term existence] belong to equivocal terms (al-asmā’ al-mushtaraka).’[22]

One major feature of Ibn Sīnā’s ontology is that he considers existence to have a different ontological status with respect to God and with respect to contingent beings. God’s existence is identical to His essence since God is absolutely simple; God’s existence is Himself. But for contingent existents, which are created, their existences are each distinct from their essences; contingent existence is a non-constituent concomitant (lāzim ghayr muqawwam) of the essence or quiddity.[23] In other words, the word existence refers to two wholly different ontological states with respect to God and creatures. Thus, Janos concludes that Ibn Sīnā takes existence to be an equivocal term:

If we take seriously Avicenna’s claim that God has essential existence, or that God’s existence is identical with His essence, then it will become clear that wujūd cannot be univocal, for it will be treated sometimes as an external lāzim of the essence (in the case of contin­gent beings), other times as essential existence (in the case of God). At the very least, then, existence will have to be a mildly equivocal notion.[24]

The importance of this finding is that Ibn Sīnā’s view of God as the Necessary Existence in Himself and the Ismaili view that God is beyond existence/non-existence do not necessarily conflict substantially and may only differ due to employing different semantic frameworks. The following quote from al-Taʿlīqāt of Ibn Sīnā (which was later reproduced by Saḍr al-Dīn al-Qunawī in his corresponds with Nāṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī), where he admits that God in His reality (ḥaqīqa) is not the same as ‘existence’ (wujūd) in general and that the formal definition (ḥadd) of God as the Necessary Existence in Himself does not strictly correspond to God’s Reality (ḥaqīqa):

Likewise, we do not know the reality of the First (ḥaqīqat al-awwal). We know of Him that existence is necessary for Him or it is not. This, [however], is His concomitant not His reality.  We know by means of this concomitant the other concomitants like oneness and the rest of the attributes. It is [only] possible to grasp His reality [in that] He is existent by His Essence (al-mawjūd bi-dhātihi) meaning He has existence through His Essence. The meaning of our saying that ‘He has existence’ points to something whose reality we do not know. His reality is not the same as existence (laysa ḥaqīqatuhu nafs al-wujūd), nor is it a quiddity since the existence with the quiddities is external to their realities while He in His Essence is the cause of existence (ʿillat al-wujūd). It is therefore the case that existence enters into defining Him (taḥdīdihi) as the genus and differentia enter into the definition of simple substances because of what the intellect requires for them; [in this case], existence is a part of His definition (ḥadd) but not His reality, just as genus and differentia are parts of the definitions of simple substances but not their essences. Truly for Him, His reality (ḥaqīqa) is beyond existence (fawq al-wujūd) and existence is among its concomitants; [likewise], the parts of the definition (ḥadd) of the simple substance are parts of its definition, not its reality as it is something the intellect requires. As for Him in His Essence, He has no parts.[25]

In the above quotation, Ibn Sīnā offers several important concessions with respect to his use of the term wujūd for God – concessions that bring Ibn Sīnā’s views in closer alignment with the Ismaili position that God transcends existence. First, Ibn Sīnā admits that the characterization of God as wājib al-wujūd (Necessary Existence in Himself) does not truly describe God in Himself or God’s Reality (ḥaqīqa): ‘The meaning of our saying that that “He has existence” points to something whose reality we do not know.’ In other words, although Islamic philosophers may formally designate God using the word ‘existence’ – which is a part (juz’) of the formal definition (ḥadd) of God – in reality, God does not really possess existence in any way; rather, He is the cause of the existence of all contingent essences: ‘His reality is not the same as existence (laysa ḥaqīqatuhu nafs al-wujūd), nor is it a quiddity since the existence with the quiddities is external to their realities while He in His Essence is the cause of existence (ʿillat al-wujūd).’ This leads to the inescapable conclusion that God in His Reality is ‘beyond existence’: ‘Truly for Him, His reality (ḥaqīqa) is beyond existence (fawq al-wujūd).’ These remarks suggest that Ibn Sīnā only uses the term ‘existence’ for God as in ‘Necessary Existence’ in an equivocal manner: God in His ḥaqīqa is not an existent, does not possess existence, and actually transcends existence (fawq al-wujūd) since He is the source or cause of existence (ʿillat al-wujūd). This appears to vindicate al-Shahrastānī’s claims that existence can only be used equivocally for God and that God is truly the source of existence (mūjid) rather than its possessor.[26]

[1] ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī, tr. Nicholas Heer, The Precious Pearl (New York: State University of New York Press, 1979), 34-35.

[2] This is argued at length in Charles H. Kahn, Essays on Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[3] Michael Wiitala and Paul DiRado, “In What Sense Does the One Exist? Existence and Hypostasis in Plotinus,” in John F. Finamore and Danielle A. Layne (eds.), Platonic Pathways: Selected Papers from the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (Gloucester, UK: Prometheus Trust, 2018), 77-92: 81.

[4] Wiitala and  DiRado, “In What Sense Does the One Exist,” 90.

[5] Walker, “Early Philosophical Shiʿism,” 53, 82,

[6] al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql,131.

[7] Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Shish faṣl or Six Chapters, 34 (English), 6 (Persian), translated modified.

[8] al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql,131-133; al-Shahrastānī, Struggling, 36-42; Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Knowledge and Liberation, ed. and tr. Faquir Muhammad Hunzai (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 42, for existence being a kind of genus, which Khusraw interprets as a causal rank of the ontological hierarchy in accordance with Proclus’ understanding of genus-species relations.

[9] Caleb M. Cohoe, “Why the One Cannot Have Parts: Plotinus on Divine Simplicity, Ontological Independence and Perfect Being Theology,” The Philosophical Quarterly 67/269 (2017): 751-771.

[10] al-Sijistānī, al-Maqālīd, 154.

[11] al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql,131.

[12] Al-Sijistānī, Kashf, tr. Landolt, 88-8; Khusraw, Shish faṣl, 6-7 (Persian text); al-Shahrastānī, Struggling, 10, 48, 49, 51, 76, 86, 87, 89, 90.

[13] al-Sijistānī, Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. Henry Corbin (Paris-Tehran: Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1949), 19, tr. Herman Landolt in Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi (eds.), Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 2 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 93.

[14] Khusraw, Knowledge and Liberation, 27, 84-85.

[15] al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql,152.

[16] Wiitala and  DiRado, “In What Sense Does the One Exist.”

[17] al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql,153; al-Shahrastānī, Struggling, 43. 48. 55.

[18] al-Shahrastānī, Struggling, 48, 51.

[19] Alexander Treiger, “Modulation of Existence (taškīk al-wuǧūd, analogia entis) and its Greek and Arabic Sources,” in Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman (eds.), Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327-363: 332-333.

[20] Daniel D. De Haan, ‘The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being in Avicenna’s ‘Metaphysics of the Healing’,” Review of Metaphysics 69/2 (2015): 261-286, 276.

[21] Damien Janos, “Avicenna on Equivocity and Modulation: A Reconsideration of the asmā’ mushakkika (and tashkīk al-wujūd),” Oriens 50 (2022): 1-62,

[22] Janos, “Avicenna on Equivocity and Modulation,” 49.

[23] Treiger, “Modulation of Existence,” 363.

[24] Janos, “Avicenna on Equivocity and Modulation,” 51.

[25] Ibn Sīnā, al-Taʿlīqāt, ed. Abdurrahman Badawī (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma, 1973; reprinted by Dār al-Islāmiyya, Beirut, no date), 35.

[26] al-Shahrastānī, Struggling, 45, 48, 55, 57, 64.

It is worth mentioning that in the Christian tradition, there are many models of the God as the Trinity. These include the Monarchical Trinity, the Thomist Trinity based on “Relative Identity”, Constitutive models of the Trinity, and Social models of the Trinity. I once hosted three Christian scholars as shown in this video.

Likewise, in Islam, there are numerous models of Tawhid (God’s Unicity). These include the Mu‘tazili, Ash‘ari, Maturidi, Hanbali, Salafi, Taymi, Ismaili, Twelver, Avicennian, and Sufi Akbari models of Tawhid. I explain some of these in this video.

This was a debate over which theology is true: Dyer’s Orthodox model of the Christian Trinity known as the Monarchical Trinity vs. Jake’s Salafi model of Islamic Tawhid. Without doing a full-blown review of this, below are my immediate comments.

First, neither debater really offered positive arguments for their positions. Jake simply asserted his Salafi Athari model of Tawhid, which he bases on the views of Ibn Khuzayma, Muhammad b. Isma‘il al-Bukhari, and Ibn Taymiyya. Jake affirms that God has real-distinct attributes that are not identical to God’s Essence and not separable from God’s Essence. This is already a major problem because the Sunni doctrine of “entitative attributes” (sifat ma‘nawiyya) effectively means that Allah is a metaphysical composite. These divine attributes are uncreated and eternal but they are not identical to God Himself, which begs the question as to whether they are dependent upon God or whether God is dependent upon the attributes. Both options are fatal to Tawhid. Most recently, Dr. Hasan Spiker, a Sunni Akbari metaphysician (he is a real metaphysician unlike Jake), told Dr. Shadee Elmasry that the Ash’ari/Maturidi/Hanbali doctrine of God having real-distinct attributes is devoid of intellectual content (see video).

Overall, while both debaters launched assaults on the other’s worldview, I found Jake's theological positions to be weaker and less rigorously defended against Dyer's attacks. Like Ibn Taymiyya, Jake affirmed the plain meaning (zahir) of all the anthropomorphic descriptions of God found in the Qur’an/Sunni Hadith including Allah’s face, hands, eyes, feet, descent, sitting, etc. On the face of it, this type of theology is contradictory. One cannot claim that God has no likeness to His creation and affirm a real face, hand, eyes or descending for God (as Jake's friend Dr. Chowdhury argued in a journal article).

Jake pre-emptively tried to defend against the charge of anthropomorphism - of making God similar to human creatures - by claiming that the shared wording and shared meanings between God’s face/hands/feet and creaturely face/hands/feet does NOT entail any ontological similarity between them. I find this to be an odd argument for Jake to make. In a podcast with Dr. Rasmussen, Jake evoked the ‘correspondence theory of truth’ to argue that multiple linguistic descriptions of God in the Qur’an/Hadith entail the existence of real-distinct ontological attributes in God: “Shouldn’t it be that there is a real correspondence between those attributes and what we are actually saying such that it provides evidence against divine simplicity?” But here, Jake has committed to a nominalism, thinking that this would allow him to avoid the problem of anthropomorphism. After all, if there are no universals whatsoever, then words like face, hands, etc. no longer designate things that necessarily share any similarities. But this totally destroys Jake’s commitment to the ‘correspondence theory of truth’ as there is no more correlation between the signs (scriptural language) and the signifier (extra-mental reality).

Another problem with Jake’s “apparent meaning” position is that the Athari/Hanbali scholars say: “the apparent meaning’ (al-ẓāhir) is what first comes to the mind from that text, irrespective of whether it is literal or metaphorical” (Ibn Qudama 2002, 55). So when we hear or read the word “hand”, “foot”, or “fingers”, what is the meaning that first comes to the mind? Dyer pounced on this and argued that Jake must choose between two options:
1) either the plain meaning entails that God is similar to His creation in some respect - this being the basis of speaking of both God’s “Foot” and a creaturely “foot”;
2) alternatively, one can assert that there is no similarity at all between God’s Foot and a creaturely foot; but in this case, Jake’s entire discourse of affirming these attributes is uninformative and meaningless.

Jake also affirms that God performs temporal actions - like speaking, forgiving, commanding, etc. - which Taymiyyan Atharis regard as uncreated actions that subsist in God’s Essence. Hoover refers to these as God’s “voluntary attributes”. This leads to the paradoxical belief that God performs temporal yet uncreated divine actions - an idea that Jake ascribes to al-Bukhari himself.

Jake went on to attack Dyer’s Trinity model by arguing that the Monarchical Trinity amounts to tri-theism using 3 arguments from his older debates: first, he argued that the Orthodox Trinity is polytheistic because the doctrine admits of 3 "gods" (three beings that are predicatively divine); Jake may have a point here but it did not clearly come through in the slides or the cross-examination. Furthermore, Dyer would later parry to this by showing how Sunni scholars like al-Ghazali are not very clear when it comes to “counting” either and they switch between counting by division and counting by identity. In fact, I have read al-Ghazali, al-Bazdawi, and al-Nasafi (Abu Mu‘in) explain the concept of God and His Attributes being distinct yet inseparable using the analogy of numbers where each distinct attribute is like the number one in relation to the number ten. For example:

“For if we say ‘God, the Exalted,’ then we have referred to the Divine Essence together with the divine attributes, and not to the Essence alone… Thus Zayd’s hand is not Zayd and is not other than Zayd; rather both expressions are absurd. Similarly, every part is not other than the whole, nor is it the same as the whole… Thus it is possible that an attribute is other than the Essence in which the attribute subsists”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī, Moderation in Belief, 2013, 129

“God the Exalted is eternal and everlasting with all of His attributes and names. God’s names and attributes are not identical to Him and not other than Him – just as in the case of the number one with regard to the number ten.”

Abu Mu‘in al-Nasafi, Baḥr al-kalām fī ʿilm al-tawḥīd, 1997, 91

Therefore, when Jake uses the counting argument against Orthodoxy - “how many gods do you count?”, I do not see why the Orthodox cannot come back and say: “how many uncreated things (ghayr makhluqat) exist?”.

Second, Jake argued that the Father, Son, Spirit cannot one God because they do not have the same power or knowledge; I think this is a valid argument but I would have focused on the problem of the Son and Spirit lacking aseity in the Monarchical model (and to be fair, Jake has focused on that in past debates). I am not sure why he did not exploit the problem of aseity against Dyer.

Third, Jake charged Dyer's methodology for proving Orthodoxy using TAG with epistemic circularity. As far as I understand TAG and this critique, I would agree with Jake’s argument, which I acknowledge below.

Fourth, Jake argued that the Trinity was not affirmed by the earliest Christian Church fathers and is not really orthodox. I am not a specialist in Late Antique Jewish thought or early Christian thought, but generally speaking, most critical scholars (as far as I am aware) would agree that the first century Christians were NOT Trinitarians and that Jews like Philo and those writing the Targum literature are NOT Trinitarians. What is noteworthy is that some Jews certainly affirmed a subordinationist Logos theology. Later in the cross-examination, Jake mentioned Justin Martyr as an example of someone who is a Saint for the Orthodox but who did not believe in the Trinity. This was a good point.

Dyer devoted almost the entire opening statement to launching several fatal arguments against Jake's Salafi theology. First, he charged Jake with a gross double standard: Jake made his career attacking the Orthodox for affirming 3 "gods" and chiding them for not counting by identity; instead, the Orthodox count by division and thereby claim that there is but one God. However, Dyer notes, Jake himself asserts that there is only one God yet he affirms that this God has multiple uncreated and mutually distinct attributes. There is an analogy between what Trinitarians call Divine Persons and what Sunnis call the uncreated Divine Attributes. As I noted in my debate against Jake, some important Christian theologians writing in Arabic such as Abu Ra'ita, Ammar al-Basri, Bishop Elias, and Ibn al-Tayyib, argued that what Muslims call divine attributes (such as the divine life, knowledge, power), the Christians refer to as the divine hypostases (see Husseini 2014). Thus, Dyer makes a good point here that Jake never dealt with. I discuss this Person-Attribute connection based on scholarship in this video.

Dyer further pushed Jake on God's attributes like hands, eyes, feet, etc. He argued Ibn Taymiyya and Jake are not consistent on this: is the similarity between God’s hand and creaturely hands only in name? Or is it also in meaning? If it is only in name, then these predications are uninformative. If the similarity is in meaning, then God and creatures share a real similarity. In Dyer's words: "What is an uncreated foot that is nothing like a human foot? What is a more perfect foot?" For those who do not know, Dyer was picking up on Ibn Taymiyya's argument that God must have attributes like hands, eyes, etc. because He must possess all perfections. Hoover summarizes Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments on this issue as follows:

A living being who can see and hear is more perfect than one who cannot. Similarly, one who is living and knowing is more perfect than one who is not. Moreover, God must be qualified as hearing and seeing lest He be imperfect and dependent upon another... One who has power to act by his hands is more perfect than one who does not because the former can choose to act with his hands or through some other means whereas the latter does not have the option of using his hands. By implication, God’s hands are among His attributes of perfection.

Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya's Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism, 64-65

Dyer went further and asked Jake: “Are the divine attributes a se or are they dependent on God? Or is God dependent on His mutually distinct attributes? These were questions I asked Jake in our 2022 Debate and he has yet to provide any answer.

Furthermore, Dyer caught on to the absurdity of believing that God has uncreated yet temporal attributes. Dyer rightly argued that temporal divine attributes or temporal divine actions issuing from God and subsisting in His Essence entail that God’s Essence itself must be temporal. This was the position of the Karramiyya, whom orthodox Sunnis like al-Juwayni condemned as heretics. Dyer went on to attack Jake's epistemology as problematic because it rejects universals and is wholly nominalist.

However, I thought that Dyer’s TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) did not fare too well under questioning from Jake. Basically, Dyer holds that only the Orthodox Christian worldview provides a metaphysical and epistemic foundation for various truths about human selfhood, knowledge, and the Cosmos including the laws of logic and the very possibility of knowledge. Jake pressed Dyer as to how he can avoid circularity in making this argument. Furthermore, why must the answer to the argument be an Orthodox Christian theology? Conceivably, Ismaili Neoplatonism would be an adequate solution to TAG. Perhaps even the Salafi creed…?

I also have problems with Monarchical Trinity models. While Jake accused the model of falling into tri-theism, I think a bigger problem is that the Son and Holy Spirit are not truly divine but eternal proximate creations of God. In my friendly debate with Dr. Joshua Sijuwade, I pressed my interlocuter on the issue of the Father alone being a se and the Son and Spirit lacking aseity or ontological independence. In my view, aseity is both intrinsic and essential to God. The Monarchical Trinity model collapses into the Father alone being God and the Son and Spirit as Neoplatonic-like emanations that eternally depend upon the Father. In Islamic philosophical language, the Son and Holy Spirit - as emanations from the Father - are dependent realities and contingent in themselves (mumkin al-wujud bi-dhatihi) while the Father alone is necessary in himself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi).

Ultimately, while Salafi Da‘wabros debating Orthobros may be entertaining for YouTube, the strongest and most internally consistent philosophical critique of the Christian Trinity can only be deployed by Muslims who believe in divine simplicity - such as Mu‘tazilis, Ismailis, Avicennians, and Akbaris. Salafi, Hanbali, Ash‘ari, and Maturidi critiques of the Trinity are always handicapped by the metaphysical inconsistencies within their own systems, such as mutually distinct uncreated divine attributes, anthropomorphic attributes (for Salafis), temporal creation (for Ash‘aris, Maturidis, and Hanbalis), and arbitrary divine will (Ash‘aris and Hanbalis).

I encourage everyone to watch the entire debate and be prepared to laugh out loud at certain points

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