Is Ilmul Kalam Haram? | Mohammed Hijab

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:06]What is Kalam? Because another reason why this is important is the intra-Islamic discussion. Especially among Salafists um or Hanbalists.

[00:00:17]Because in the in the early days of um Hanbalism or the Tabain and and the the Salaf there were books that were authored referred to as kind of uh censure of Kalam books.

[00:00:31]Like al-Harawi wrote a book called Dhamm ul-Kalam.

[00:00:34]He's a Hanbali scholar, which is the dis-praise, if you want, of of Kalam.

[00:00:39]And you find like a Shafi'i famous scholar, one of the four Imams from the Madhhabs, he's saying if someone does Kalam, okay, then you should bring out your shoe and I would hit them with my slipper and stuff like that. So, you're thinking why is Muhammad Hijab and why are we engaging in something that the Salaf actually were vehemently against?

[00:00:59]Look at that. Look at a Shafi'i saying, "I'll bring out the shoe and this and and this this other one saying Dhamm ul-Kalam."

[00:01:05]But what I want to propose to you is actually when they were using the word Kalam, they had a different understanding of it.

[00:01:11]So, when they were using the word Kalam, they were talking about a proto-Mu'tazilite amalgamation in the Aqidah in this theological enterprise of Islam of Islamic ideas with Aristotelian ideas.

[00:01:25]Where you had proto-Mu'tazilism and then the formation of Mu'tazilism.

[00:01:30]But Kalam, the word Arabic Kalam means speaking or words, yeah, or to speak.

[00:01:36]Is the is actually defined by uh let's let's go with al-Farabi's definition, okay?

[00:01:42]A derived faculty that allows one to defend certain opinions and actions that have been stated by one who has established the religion and refuting that which opposes it.

[00:01:54]Ibn Khaldun he has to a science that entails defending the credal positions with rational evidences and responding to the religious innovators and deviants from the school of thought of pious predecessors and Sunnism. It's interesting that he uses that language, but nevertheless he's basically saying both of them are saying the same thing.

[00:02:11]Kalam is apologetics. It's a defense of a credal position.

[00:02:16]That's how later scholars defined what Kalam is.

[00:02:21]Kalam or Kalam arguments, especially in the medieval period, are arguments which are meant to defend the idea that God is one.

[00:02:30]The idea that God is multi-attributional.

[00:02:33]The the idea that God is not mult- multiple, there's not there's not multiple gods, polytheistic. Et cetera.

[00:02:39]If you're doing that, you're doing that type of Kalam. If you're doing apologetics, then you're doing a type of Kalam.

[00:02:43]So, from that perspective we can see that you know, this this insistence that Kalam is I I either Haram or something which the Salaf dis-praised is outside of its context because it was talking about a very specific group of people at a very specific time and the word you used was different.

[00:03:04]This is very important in Islamic history and and any history, right?

[00:03:07]Sometimes you can use a word in in the 5th century, okay, which meant X and then in the 7th century they they're using it in a different context now.

[00:03:15]And for you to insist that they meant this, it actually it means that you don't know the thick description of history and the contextual aspects of it.

[00:03:23]>> Some people uh says that the Kalam understanding with um with Muslim scholars is a version of philosophy, not that when they say philosophy, they means by philosophy the Western philosophy.

[00:03:40]The Greek philosophy. But when they say Kalam, it means that that philosophy in Islamic um um perspective or within Islamic frame.

[00:03:51]So, what do we say about this?

[00:03:53]>> Yeah, so look, the word philosophy obviously means uh philosophy means the love of wisdom, okay?

[00:03:59]Sophia means the love of and philo Oh, sorry, philo means the love of. Sophia means the wisdom.

[00:04:04]And it means the same thing in Arabic. It means the same thing in English. Um but in in in a sense, philosophy is just ration- rationalizing things. Using reason to come to conclusions. That's what really the the dictionary definition of philosophy is. Using reason reason to come to conclusions about things, okay?

[00:04:21]When Ibn Taymiyyah and others, they wrote Ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin, a response to the logicians, okay?

[00:04:29]He was responding to a very specific kind of logician, which is really Aristotle, okay? This whole thing was a response to Aristotle. And he wasn't responding to him as to negate everything he's saying. If you read the book, which some say is one of the last books he's ever written, he would say he was agreeing against some aspects and he was disagreeing with some aspects. So, he was philosophizing himself. And there's no question that Ibn Taymiyyah and these, you know, later Hanbalites were philosophers because they were rationalizing things. But I mean, the thing is to what end would one uh from a conservative Hanbalite kind of sort of perspective say that philosophy is Haram or impermissible since natural philosophy is science.

[00:05:07]And it's only recently that science has been divided as a separate kind of knowledge production to the rest of philosophy. Just just to play devil's advocate, you're right about the science branching off from natural philosophy, right? And people in the past were called natural philosophers like Darwin was. However, what they would respond to you is that that's fine.

[00:05:41]Sure, I mean, from a scriptural perspective we'd ask them to provide evidence for that. That you can't use rational reason. Like for example, the very famous scholar of the Salaf, one of one of you know, one of the predecessors, how do you know that God exists? How you know, the um the the the entrails of the of the feces of the uh camel shows that the camel was there. So, it's like he was invoking cause and effect, okay?

[00:06:04]What's that if not philosophy? Even the discussion of Abu Hanifah and this I don't know to what extent it's authentic, but there's a discussion that he had about the boat and stuff and he was having a debate with with a That that is philosophy. So, the point is is it's it's going to be very difficult to you to find an arbitrary line as to at what point do do you accept rational argumentation and what point you don't?

[00:06:25]You know what I mean? So, that's an important um thing to mention.

[00:06:30]Um one of the common objections is the idea that um Kalam or philosophy um it shouldn't be engaged with unless it's uh uh for necessity in order to, you know, uh argue back on, you know, these arguments.

[00:06:46]Um and it's not for the layman.

[00:06:49]So, how do we be able to kind of, you know, understand this in that context?

[00:06:52]>> With all due respect, a lot of the people that make these claims have I'm not going to mention any scholar's name. I don't want to embarrass anybody, but there's one particular scholar in Saudi Arabia, right? He's a huge scholar. And he said, "I was reading pages and pages and pages of Ibn Ibn Taymiyyah's books and I couldn't understand a word." Now, I No, hold on.

[00:07:10]I actually respect his honesty.

[00:07:12]But when we say the layman, when we say the layman, who are we talking about? Because Ibn Taymiyyah was writing as a philosopher.

[00:07:22]So, if you get a Muhaddith to try and decipher the words of a philosopher, it's the same as getting a philosopher to try and decipher the words of a Muhaddith.

[00:07:30]So, this distinction between the layman, you know, scholar distinction, it's it's fuzzy at best.

[00:07:37]Uh Ibn Taymiyyah was making arguments which are philosophical in nature. I I actually believe that if you translate Ibn Taymiyyah's works and you give it to a philosopher of religion who's not Muslim at all, zero, he'd understand it more than uh you know, such and such scholar who actually follows Ibn Taymiyyah's credal position.

[00:07:52]He'd he'd follow his arguments in an easier way because he has a better training for that. He understands the four causes, he understands the the effect, he understands doesn't matter. He's gone through the logic, predicate logic, propositional logic, all that stuff.

[00:08:04]That's That is the language of Ibn Taymiyyah's, a lot of his rational arguments at least.

[00:08:09]So, I think these are just kind of like outdated arguments. Uh frankly, and now I'll be honest, I think that we've we we've refuted them before in the Sahadaweyah.

[00:08:18]In the Dawah. And things have changed The overturning of the has completely I mean, if I this was a big deal for us about 3 4 years ago.

[00:08:26]If you remember, right? So, we got I put out all these different things what Ibn Taymiyyah is with and then people just started saying, "You know what? This guy has a point."

[00:08:34]Everyone started doing their own philosophy book.

[00:08:36]So, I don't think there's You know, there's not And I see some, you know, people that follow Sheikh Rabi' al-Madkhali and you know, staunch.

[00:08:44]They're doing philosophy.

[00:08:45]They're talking about causes and effects and all this kind of stuff, but it's just primitive. The only difference is you're doing a primitive thing.

[00:08:52]It's fine.

[00:08:54]Uh we're not saying You sometimes we need the primitive philosophy so that people can understand it, simpletons can understand.

[00:08:59]But it doesn't mean that we're going to disqualify you know, people from thinking on a more intellectual basis now because you're not capable of that doesn't mean everyone's not capable of that.

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