Injecting fuzzism into a text

Bassam Zawadi vs Qāḍī ʿAbd Al-Jabbār — Or In Vitro Fertilization of Texts

By Tahir Muhammad

A while ago, Sh. Salman Nasir and I started a series of posts (with Zeeshan Choudhry as co-author for the first one) addressing Sultan Al-ʿUmayrī’s concept of ʿibāda and its English rendition by Bassam Zawadi (henceforth BZ). Based on BZ’s initial responses, it became apparent early on that their fuzzy concept (called fuzzism)[1] was characterized by capricious methodology, an arbitrary, forced reading of the texts, and consistent shapeshifting. So, we decided to abort our series as the exchange was turning into a futile exercise (tldr here). I practically stopped following Bassam after that, but fast forward to today, someone shared a recent post on the topic of shirk/ ʿibāda from him, and he has not changed one bit.

In that post, Bassam tries to argue that for Qaḍī ʿAbd Al-Jabbār (henceforth QAJ, d. 415 H.) the acts of veneration and invocation Christians address to Mary are considered worship in and of themselves, regardless of whether istiqlāl is ascribed to her. He provides a passage from QAJ which, taken at face value, does seem to indicate that addressing those acts to Mary makes her an ilāh/deity. Basically, BZ takes QAJ’s cited passage to be limited to shirk akbar. But that reading depends on taking one excerpt in isolation. Once QAJ’s fuller discussion (a translation of which is provided at the end) is restored, it becomes clear that he was operating within a wider semantic field, where excessive obedience/submission licenses rhetorical or figurative use of religious language and terms such as ilāh, rabb, ʿabd, etc.

The passage isolated in BZ’s post is part of QAJ’s response to a Christian objection to Sura 5-Al-Māʾida:116 (And when Allah will say, “Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as gods besides Allah?’”),**[2]** that they did not believe Mary to be a deity. QAJ answers this objection in stages, and his response can be summarized as follows. First, he argues that Q 5:116 is not a plain declarative report but a form of taqrīr. Second, he notes that some Christians did in fact say things amounting to Mary’s divinity. Third, and most relevant to BZ’s use of the passage, he argues that the description “ilāh” can be linguistically justified even where the term is not being used in a strictly divine or fuzzist sense.

QAJ begins his first response with the observation that the verse is not a plain declarative sentence where something is affirmed. Rather, its apparent meaning is interrogative and questioning, which is inconceivable of Allah the Omniscient. Therefore, its meaning is confirmation (taqrīr) by eliciting an answer from the one questioned.

In his second response, QAJ points out that there are indeed some Christians who held that view (Mary’s divine nature): “Also, among the Christians there are those who have said something to this effect, even if they did not state it in those exact words. For they said that Mary became purified when she received the divine substance and gave birth to it, and every substance receives only what belongs to its own substance and kind, and gives birth only to what belongs to its own substance”.

More importantly, QAJ then makes the point (which is where BZ’s quote is from) that the use of ilāh to characterize their belief in Mary is linguistically justified because that term has been used for much less, in cases not involving literal or fuzzist deification. He provides two examples to illustrate the point being made.

First, sura 9-Al-Tawba:31 (They have taken their rabbis and monks, as lords beside Allah). In a separate work of his, dedicated to responding to certain objections to Qurʾānic verses, QAJ explains that according to the sense intended here, “the owner of a slave may be described as his lord (rabb) when the slave obeys him”.[3] This broader usage is not unique to QAJ. Other mufassirūn likewise noted that the term arbāb (plural of rabb) in this verse need not be taken as denoting shirk akbar, but may instead refer to a lesser form of shirk. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah (d. 541 AH), for example, states in his tafsīr of this verse that although some understood it as referring to shirk akbar, “others say that their taking them as lords (arbāb) amounts to a sort of (lesser) shirk; indeed, one who acts for the sake of showing off (riyāʾ) is said to have committed shirk, and there are reports to that effect”.[4]

This seems to be a recurrent theme of QAJ’s methodology in dealing with such objections (where a particular group denies some belief ascribed to them in the Qurʾān). He frequently resorts to explaining the contentious terms in those contexts as rhetorical devices, not to be taken in the literal or conventional sense. To support this, and in addition to what we have already seen about rabb, we could add his explanation of the use of ilāh in Sura 45-Al-Jāthiya:23 (Have you seen one who has taken his own desire as his god?). There, QAJ addresses the contentious question: how can taking one’s own desire as god (ilāh) be correct? His response is that such a person “obeys his desire and turns away from the path of reason, and this is a comparison that is perfectly acceptable in the language”.[5] Here, desire being called an “ilāh” is a linguistic comparison based on obedience, not an assertion of real divinity or worship being addressed to it.

QAJ’s second example, the hadith: “Wretched is the slave of the world, wretched is the slave of the dirham, wretched is the slave of fine garments”, makes the same semantic move. About this hadith, QAJ comments: “when love of these things overwhelms a person and he becomes infatuated with them, he becomes like a slave to them”. He cited this hadith because ʿabd/slave (sharing the same root as ʿibāda) is used here in a figurative sense. This further supports the fact that QAJ is trying to linguistically justify the use of ilāh for Mary. He is not arguing on a narrowly ontological plane, as though the entire question were whether Christians explicitly posited Mary as a literal deity or whether their actions made her a fuzzist ilāh. Rather, he is arguing that just as ʿabd in the hadith does not denote literal servitude, ilāh and rabb in QAJ’s discussion need not always denote literal or fuzzist divinity or lordship in the strictest sense.

To conclude, QAJ’s argument is linguistic before it is metaphysical. His response to the Christian objection to Q 5:116 does not remain on a narrowly literal plane, as BZ assumes. QAJ’s broader method is to explain contested religious terms through accepted rhetorical and semantic extension. That is why he can appeal to arbāb in Q 9:31, to ilāh in Q 45:23, and to the hadith of “the slave of the dirham.” Read in that light, the Mary passage does not show that QAJ was simply equating invocation with literal or fuzzist ulūhiyya; it shows that he regarded such language as linguistically licit within a broader rhetoric of obedience, exaltation.

But then again, context has never been something that prevented Bassam from in solitudo fertilization of texts.

APPENDIX

TRANSLATION OF QĀḌĪ ʿABD AL-JABBĀR’S FULLER DISCUSSION[6]

If someone were to say:

“It is certainly clear that the Christians have said of Jesus son of Mary, peace be upon him, that he is not a prophet, nor God’s messenger, nor a righteous servant; rather, that he is a god, a lord, a creator, and a provider; that God is one of three; and that he was killed and crucified. Yet your authority says in your Book: ‘did you say to the people, “Take me and my mother as gods besides Allah?”’ So the Christians said: this is false. Even if we say of him that he is a god, we do not say of his mother that she is a god.”

The reply is:

It is not being reported from them that they said this. There is no report here to which truth or falsehood could attach. Rather, He only says: ‘did you say to the people, “Take me and my mother as gods apart from God?”’ This is not a report. Anyone with even a little knowledge of Arabic — let alone much — knows that. The outward form of the statement is interrogation and inquiry, but that cannot literally apply to God, exalted be His praise, since inquiry and questioning belong only to one who does not know what he is asking about. Its meaning is rather one of confirmation (taqrīr) by eliciting acknowledgement, in order to draw forth the answer from the one questioned.

This is like His saying to Moses, peace be upon him: ‘And what is that in your right hand, Moses?’ (Q 20:17) even though He, mighty and majestic, knew that better than Moses did. Likewise His saying to Iblīs: ‘What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?’ (Q 7:12) even though He, mighty and majestic, knew better than Iblīs what had prevented him. Thus He said to the Messiah: did you say this concerning yourself, or concerning your mother who bore you — she being the closest of people to you, the one with the greatest claim upon you, and the most exalted in your regard — in order that his innocence, peace be upon him, might be made manifest from every angle. Thus, the questioner’s assumption that this is a report has been shown false. This is a sufficient and satisfactory answer.

Moreover, among the Christians there are those who have said the equivalent of this [ndlr: i.e. Mary’s divine nature], even if not in precisely these words. They say that Mary was purified when she received the divine substance and gave birth to it, and every substance receives only what belongs to its own substance and genus, and gives birth only to what belongs to its own substance. This is a second answer. Indeed, among them are those who stated this explicitly. This is clear in church books found in the districts of al-Ahwāz and elsewhere in Iraq, written in Syriac script. Part of this was translated in a letter written by ʿAbd Yasūʿ b. Bahrīn, bishop of Ḥarrān, al-Raqqa, and Al-Muṣayṣir — who was later appointed metropolitan of Mosul and Al-Jazīra — to a Jacobite priest called Bādūs: ‘You do not deny that the pure Virgin is a god, as you see it, but a human being, as we see it.’

This is an explicit declaration by these people that Mary is a god. The Nestorians disagree with them on this point and dispute with them over it. This is clear; only one ignorant of Christian doctrines and the reality of Christianity would deny it.

Moreover, among these three sects are those who say of Mary that she is truly the mother of the Messiah, the Son of God, and truly gave birth to him — not merely the mother of the divine Son of God in some secondary sense; that no one other than she gave birth to the Son of God; that her son has no father except God, and no begetter except God; that God chose her for Himself and for bearing His son from among all women; and that, had she been like other women, she would only have given birth through intercourse with men. Rather, she was singled out for this because she conceived the Son of God and gave birth to the Son of God, who has no true son but him and no true offspring but him. They also say that she sits upon the Throne at the left side of the Lord, the father of her son, while her son is at His right. They invoke her and ask her for abundance of provision, bodily health, long life, forgiveness of sins, and that she be for them, with her son and the father of her son, a wall, a support, a source of succour, an intercessor, and a pillar.

Now if a man were to exalt another human being with even a tenth of this exaltation, and say of him a tenth of what they say of her, it would be permissible in Arabic — indeed in any language — to say that he had taken him as a god/ilāh. Do you not see God’s saying: ‘They took their rabbis and monks as lords beside Allah?’ Yet they did not fast for them or pray to them. Rather, they followed them: they prohibited for them what was lawful, and they therefore treated it as unlawful; and they permitted for them what was unlawful, and they therefore treated it as lawful. Yet this is less than what they said concerning Mary.

In this same sense is the Prophet’s saying, peace and blessings be upon him: ‘Wretched is the slave of the world; wretched is the slave of the dirham; wretched is the slave of the fine garment.’ When love of these things overcomes a person and he becomes infatuated with them, he becomes like a slave to them. So even if we did not possess those texts from some of them [ndlr: i.e. Christians] explicitly stating that she is an ilāh, but instead only had a report explicitly stating that they did not call her ilāh, it would still be permissible, on account of such extreme exaltation, to apply (yuṭlaq) the term. How much more so when there is no report stating that they did not call her ilāh? Indeed, they exalted her, raised her above the angels and prophets, spoke of her in terms used of a god, and asked from her what is asked from a god — well-being and sufficiency in this world and the next — as has already been explained to you. So much so that the Jacobites say in their supplication to Mary, peace be upon her: ‘O Mary, mother of the Messiah, be for us a wall, a support, a source of succour, and a pillar.’ And the Nestorians say: ‘O mother of the Messiah, be for us likewise.’

They object to the Jacobites’ wording and say to them: do not say, ‘O Mother of God’; rather, say, ‘O Mother of the Messiah.’ The Jacobites reply: but the Messiah, according to both us and you, is truly a god. So what difference is there between us and you in meaning? You merely want to use verbal trickery with those who do not understand either our language or yours, making them imagine that you are free of this doctrine and that you are closer than we are to the Muslims in affirming divine unity.

Know also that the common masses of the Christians believe that God chose Mary for Himself and for His son, and favored her in the manner that a man chooses a woman and favors her out of desire for her. Al-Naẓẓām and al-Jāḥiẓ both reported this, adding that Christians only state this openly to those whom they trust. Ibn al-Akhshīd also said this of them in al-Maʿūna, saying: this is what they mean. Do you not see that they say: had He not begotten, He would have been barren, and barrenness is a defect? This, he says, is the doctrine of all of them, and by it they are alluding to sexual intercourse. You will find this in al-Maʿūna and in al-Jāḥiẓ’s refutation of the Christians. I also think that Abū Jaʿfar al-Iskāfī mentioned it in his own book against the Christians. Anyone who has associated at length with monks and churchmen and become familiar with them will have learned this from them.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Fuzzism is the name given to a concept of ʿibāda whose contours are unclear even to its author(s). The adherents of that concept (called fuzzists, or fuzziyyūn) are also unclear whether it is an exhaustive definition or more of a general rule. The only thing that can be confidently said about ʿibāda, according to that concept, is that it is a fuzzy feeling in the stomach. A milestone in the historical development of this concept is the event of February 5th 2022, known as hātifgate.

[2] All translations of Qurʾānic verses are from Amr Abu Ayyub, The Purple Qurʾan Translation.

[3] QAJ, Tanzīh Al-Qurʾān ʿAn Al-Maṭāʿin, Dār Al-Nahḍa Al-Ḥadītha (2005), p.165:

وعلى هذا الوجه يوصف مالك العبد بأنه ربه اذا أطاعه

[4] Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Al-Muḥarrar Al-Wajīz, Ḍār Al-Kutub Al-ʿIlmiyya (1422 H.), v. 3, p. 26.:

واحتج من يقول إن أهل الكتاب مشركون بقوله تعالى (عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ)، والغير يقول إن اتخاذ هؤلاء الأرباب ضرب ما من الإشراك وقد يقال في المرائي إنه أشرك وفي ذلك آثار

[5] Idem, p.386:

وربما قيل في قوله تعالى (أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلهَهُ هَواهُ) كيف يصح اتخاذ الهوى إلها؟ وجوابنا أنه يطيع الهوى ويعدل عن طريقة العقل وذلك تشبيه يحسن في اللغة

[6] QAJ, Tathbīt Dalāʾil Al-Nubuwwa, Dār Al-ʿArabiyya (1966), v. 1 pp. 144–8. Read online here (last accessed 3rd April 2026).