Bismillaah, wal-hamdulilaah, was-salaatu was-salaamu 'alaa rasoolillaah,
Assalaamu alaykum wa rahmatuallahi wa barakatuhu
 
 
Aqeedatut-Tahaawiyyah By Imaam at-Tahaawi The great scholar Hujjat al-lslam Abu Jaafar al-Warraq al-Tahawi  
al-Misri, may Allah have mercy on him, said: This is a presentation of  
the beliefs of ahl-al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah, according to the school of  
the jurists of this religion, Abu Hanifah an-Nu'man ibn Thabit al-Kufi,  Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ibrahim al-Ansari and Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn  
al-Hasan al-Shaybani, may Allah be pleased with them all, and what they  believe regarding the funda- mentals of the religion and their faith in the Lord of all the Worlds.



1. We say about Allah's unity believing by Allah's help - that Allah is One, without any partners.

2. There is nothing like Him.

3. There is nothing that can overwhelm Him.

4. There is no god other than Him.

5. He is the Eternal without a beginning and enduring without end.

6. He will never perish or come to an end.

7. Nothing happens except what He wills.

8. No imagination can conceive of Him and no understanding can comprehend Him.

9. He is different from any created being.

10. He is living and never dies and is eternally active and never sleeps.

11. He creates without His being in need to do so and provides for His creation without any effort.

12. He causes death with no fear and restores to life without difficulty.

13. He has always existed together with His attributes since before creation.

Bringing creation into existence did not add anything to His attributes  that
was not already there. As He was, together with His attributes, in  
pre-eternity, so He will remain t hroughout endless time.

14. It
was not only after the act of creation that He could be described  as
'the Creator' nor was it only by the act of origination that He  could
he described as 'the Originator'.

15. He was always the Lord even when there was nothing to be Lord of, and always the Creator even when there was no creation.

16. In the same way that He is the 'Bringer to life of the dead', after  He has brought them lo life a first time, and deserves this name before  
bringing them to life, so too He deserves the name of 'Creator' before  
He has created them.

17. This is because He has the power to do
everything, everything is  dependent on Him, everything is easy for Him, and He does not need  anything. 'There is nothing like Him and He is
the Hearer, the Seer'.  (al-Shura 42:11)

18. He created creation with His knowledge.

19. He appointed destinies for those He created.

20. He allotted to them fixed life spans.

21. Nothing about them was hidden from Him before He created them, and  He
knew everything that they would do before He created them.

22. He ordered them to obey Him and forbade them to disobey Him.

23. Everything happens according to His degree and will, and His will is  
accomplished. The only will that people have is what He wills for them.  What He wills for them occurs and what He does not will, does not  
occur.

24. He gives guidance to whoever He wills, and protects
them, and keeps  them safe from harm, out of His generosity; and He
leads astray whoever  He wills, and abases them, and afflicts them, out
of His justice.

25. All of them are subject to His will between either His generosity or His justice.

26. He is exalted beyond having opposites or equals.

27. No one can ward off His decree or put back His command or overpower His affairs.

28. We believe in all of this and are certain that everything comes from  
Him. 29. And we are certain that Muhammad (may Allah bless him and  
grant him peace) is His chosen servant and selected Prophet and His  
Messenger with whom He is well pleased.

30. And that he is the
seal of the prophets and the Imam of the  godfearing and the most
honoured of all the messengers and the beloved  of the Lord of all the
Worlds.

31. Every claim to prophethood after Him is falsehood and deceit.

32. He is the one who has been sent to all the jinn and all mankind with truth and guidance and with light and illumination.

33. The Qur'an is the word of Allah. It came from Him as speech without  it being possible to say how. He sent it down on His Messenger as  
revelation.

The believers accept it, as absolute truth. They are
certain that it is,  in truth, the word of Allah. It is not created, as
is the speech of  human beings, and anyone who hears it and claims that
it is human speech  has become an unbeliever. Allah warns him and
censures him and  threatens him with Fire when He says, Exalted is He:
'I will burn him in  the Fire.' (al-Muddaththir 74: 26) When Allah
threatens with the Fire  those who say 'This is just human speech'
(al-Muddaththir 74: 25) we  know for certain that it is the speech of
the Creator of mankind and  that it is totally unlike the speech of
mankind.

34. Anyone who describes Allah as being in any way the
same as a human  being has become an unbeliever. All those who grasp
this will take heed  and refrain from saying things such as the
unbelievers say, and they  will know that He, in His attributes, is not
like human beings.

35. 'The Seeing of Allah by the People of the
Garden' is true, without  their vision being all-encompassing and
without the manner of their  vision being known. As the Book of our Lord has expressed it: 'Faces on  that Day radiant, looking at their Lord'.
(al-Qiyamah 75: 22-3) The  explanation of this is as Allah knows and
wills. Everything that has  come down to us about this from the
Messenger, may Allah bless him and  grant him peace, in authentic
traditions, is as he said and means what  he intended. We do not delve
into that, trying to interpret it according  to our own opinions or
letting our imaginations have free rein. No one  is safe in his religion unless he surrenders himself completely to  Allah, the Exalted and
Glorified and to His Messenger, may Allah bless  him and grant him
peace, and leaves the knowledge of things that are  ambiguous to the one who knows them.

36. A man's Islam is not secure unless it is
based on submission and  surrender. Anyone who desires to know things
which it is beyond his  capacity to know, and whose intellect is not
content with surrender,  will find that his desire veils him from a pure understanding of Allah's  true unity, clear knowledge and correct
belief. and that he veers  between disbelief and belief, confirmation
and denial and acceptance and  rejection. He will he subject to
whisperings and find himself confused  and full of doubt, being neither
an accepting believer nor a denying  rejector.

37. Belief of a
man in the 'seeing of Allah by the people of the Garden  is not correct
if he imagines what it is like, or interprets it  according to his own
understanding since the interpretation of this  seeing' or indeed, the
meaning of any of the subtle phenomena which are  in the realm of
Lordship, is by avoiding its interpretation and strictly  adhering to
the submission. 'This is the din of Muslims. Anyone who  does not guard
himself against negating the attributes of Allah, or  likening Allah to
something else, has gone astray and has failed lo  understand Allah's
Glory, because our lord, the Glorified and the  Exalted, can only
possibly be described in terms of Oneness and Absolute  Singularity and
no creation is in any way like Him.

38. He is beyond having
limits placed on Him, or being restricted, or  having parts or limbs.
Nor is He contained by the six directions as all  created things are.

39. Al-Mi'raj (the Ascent through the heavens) is true. The Prophet, may  
Allah bless him and grant him peace, was taken by night and ascended in  his bodily form, while awake, through the heavens, to whatever heights  Allah willed for him. Allah ennobled him in the way that He ennobled
him  and revealed to him what He revealed to him, 'and his heart was not mistaken about what it saw' (al-Najm 53: 11). Allah blessed him and  
granted him peace in this world and the next.

40. Al-Hawd, (the
Pool which Allah will grant the Prophet as an honour  to quench the
thirst of his Ummah on the Day Of Judgement), is true.

41.
Al-Shifa'ah, (the intercession, which is stored up for Muslims), is  
true, as related in the (consistent and confirmed) Ahadith.

42. The covenant 'which Allah made with Adam and his offspring' is true.

43. Allah knew, before the existence of time, the exact number of those  
who would enter the Garden and the exact number of those who would enter the Fire. This number will neither be increased nor decreased.

44. The same applies to all actions done by people, which are done  exactly as Allah knew they would be done. Everyone is cased to what he  was
created for and it is the action with which a man's life is sealed  
which dictates his fate. Those who are fortunate are fortunate by the  
decree of Allah, and those who are wretched are wretched by the decree  
of Allah.

45. The exact nature of the decree is Allah's secret in His creation,  and no angel near the Throne, nor Prophet sent with a
message, has been  given knowledge of it. Delving into it and reflecting too much about it  only leads to destruction and loss, and results in
rebelliousness. So be  extremely careful about thinking and reflecting
on this matter or  letting doubts about it assail you, because Allah has kept knowledge of  the decree away from human beings, and forbidden
them to enquire about  it, saying in His Book, 'He is not asked about
what He does but they are  asked'. (al-Anbiya' 21: 23) So anyone who
asks: 'Why did Allah do  that?' has gone against a judgement of the
Book, and anyone who goes  against a judgement of the Book is an
unbeliever.

46. This in sum is what those of Allah's friends with enlightened hearts  need to know and constitutes the degree of those
firmly endowed with  knowledge. For there are two kinds of knowledge:
knowledge which is  accessible to created beings, and knowledge which is not accessible to  created beings. Denying the knowledge which is
accessible is disbelief,  and claiming the knowledge which is
inaccessible is disbelief. Belief  can only be firm when accessible
knowledge is accepted and inaccessible  knowledge is not sought after.

47. We believe in al-Lawh (the Tablet) and al-Qalam (the Pen) and in  
everything written on it. Even if all created beings were to gather  
together to make something fail to exist, whose existence Allah had  
written on the Tablet, they would not be able to do so. And if all  
created beings were to gather together to make something exist which  
Allah had not written on it, they would not be able to do so. The Pen  
has dried having written down all that will be in existence until the  
Day of Judgement. Whatever a person has missed he would have never got  
it, and whatever one gets, he would have never missed it.

48. It
is necessary for the servant to know that Allah already knows  
everything that is going to happen in His creation and hits decreed it  
in a detailed and decisive way. There is nothing that He has created in  either the heavens or the earth that can contradict it, or add to it,
or  erase it, or change it, or decrease it, or increase it in any way.
This  is a fundamental aspect of belief and a necessary element of all  
knowledge and recognition of Allah's oneness and Lordship. As Allah says in His Book: 'He created everything and decreed it he a detailed way'. (al-Furqan 25: 2) And He also says: 'Allah's command is always a
decided  decree'. (al-Ahzab 33: 38) So woe to anyone who argues with
Allah  concerning the decree and who, with a sick heart, starts delving
into  this matter. In his delusory attempt to investigate the Unseen, he is  seeking a secret that can never be uncovered, and he ends up an  
evil-doer, telling nothing but lies.

49. Al-'Arsh (the Throne) and al-Kursi (the Chair) are true.

50. He is independent of the Throne and what is beneath it.

51. He encompasses everything and is above it, and what He has created is incapable of encompassing Him.

52. We say with belief, acceptance and submission that Allah took  Ibrahim
as an intimate friend and that He spoke directly to Musa.

53. We
believe in the angels, and the Prophets, and the books which were  
revealed to the messengers, and we bear witness that they were all  
following the manifest Truth.

54. We call the people of our
qiblah Muslims and believers as long as  they acknowledge what the
Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him  peace, brought, and accept
as true everything that he said and told us  about.

55. We do not enter into vain talk about Allah nor do we allow any dispute about the religion Of Allah.

56. We do not argue about the Qur'an and we bear witness that it is the  
speech of the Lord of all the Worlds which the Trustworthy Spirit came  
down with and taught the most honoured Of all the Messengers, Muhammad,  may Allah bless him and grant him peace. It is the speech of Allah and  no speech of any created being is comparable to it. We do not say that  it was created and we do not go against the Jama'ah of the Muslims  
regarding it.

57. We do not consider any of the people of our
qiblah to he unbelievers  because of any wrong action they have done, as long as they do not  consider that action to have been lawful.

58. Nor do we say that the wrong action of a man who has belief does not have a harmful effect on him.

59. We hope that Allah will pardon the people of right action among the  
believers and grant them entrance into the Garden through His mercy, but we cannot be certain of this, and we cannot bear witness that it will  definitely happen and that they will be in the Garden. We ask  
forgiveness for the people of wrong action among the believers and,  
although we are afraid for them, we are not in despair about them.

60. Certainty and despair both remove one from the religion, but the  path
of truth for the people of the qiblah lies between the two (e.g. a  
person must fear and be conscious of Allah's reckoning as well as be  
hopeful of Allah's mercy).

61. A person does not step out or belief except by disavowing what brought him into it.

62. Belief consists of affirmation lay the tongue and acceptance by the heart.

63. And the whole of what is proven from the Prophet, upon him be peace,  
regarding the Shari'ah and the explanation (of the Qur'an and of Islam)  is true.

64. Belief is, at base, the same for everyone, but the
superiority of  some over others in it is due to their fear and
awareness of Allah,  their opposition to their desires, and their
choosing what is more  pleasing to Allah.

65. All the believers
are 'friends' of Allah and the noblest of them in  the sight of Allah
are those who are the most obedient and who most  closely follow the
Qur'an.

66. Belief consists of belief in Allah. His angels, His
books, His  messengers, the Last Day, and belief that the Decree - both
the good of  it and the evil of it, the sweet of it and the bitter or it - is all  from Allah.

67. We believe in all these things. We do
not make any distinction  between any of the messengers, we accept as
true what all of them  brought.

68. Those of the Urnmah of
Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him  peace, who have committed
grave sins will be in the Fire, but not  forever, provided they die and
meet Allah as believers affirming His  unity even if they have not
repented. They are subject to His will and  judgement. If He wants, He
will forgive them and pardon them out of His  generosity, as is
mentionied in the Qur'an when He says: 'And He  forgives anything less
than that (shirk) to whoever He wills' (al-Nisa'  4: 116); and if He
wants, He will punish them in the Fire out of His  justice and then
bring them out of the Fire through His mercy, and for  the intercession
of those who were obedient to Him, and send them to the  Garden. This is because Allah is the Protector of those who recognize  Him and will not treat them in the Next World in the same way as He  treats those who
deny Him and who are bereft of His guidance and have  failed to obtain
His protection. O Allah, You are the Protector of Islam  and its people; make us firm in Islam until the day we meet You.

69. We agree
with doing the prayer behind any of the people of the  qiblah whether
right-acting or wrong-acting, and doing the funeral  prayer over any of
them when they die.

70. We do not say that any of them will
categorically go to either the  Garden or the Fire, and we do not accuse any of them of kutr  (disbelief), shirk (associating partners with
Allah), or nifaq  (hypocrisy), as long as they have not openly
demonstrated any of those  things. We leave their secrets to Allah.

71. We do not agree with killing any of the Ummah of Muhammad, may Allah  
bless him and grant him peace, unless it is obligatory by Shari'ah to  
do so.

72. We do not recognize rebellion against our Imam or
those in charge of  our affairs even if they are unjust, nor do we wish
evil on them, nor  do we withdraw from following them. We hold that
obedience to them is  part of obedience to Allah, The Glorified, and
therefore obligatory as  long as they do not order to commit sins. We
pray for them right  guidance and pardon from their wrongs.

73. We follow the Sunnah of the Prophet and the Jama'ah of the Muslims, and avoid deviation, differences and divisions.

74. We love the people of justice and trustworthiness, and hate the people of injustice and treachery.

75. When our knowledge about something is unclear, we say: 'Allah knows best'.

76. We agree with wiping over leather socks (in Wudu) whether on a  journey or otherwise, just as has come in the (consistent and confirmed)  
ahadith.

77. Hajj and jihad under the leadership of those in
charge of the  Muslims, whether they are right or wrong-acting, are
continuing  obligations until the Last Hour comes. Nothing can annul or
controvert  them.

78. We believe in Kiraman Katibin (the noble
angels) who write down our  actions for Allah has appointed them over us as two guardians.

79. We believe in the Angel of Death who is charged with taking the spirits of all the worlds.

80. We believe in the punishment in the grave for those who deserve it,  
and in the questioning in the grave by Munkar and Nakir about one's  
Lord, one's religion and one's prophet, as has come down in ahadith from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and
in  reports from the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them all.

81. The grave is either one of the meadows of the Garden or one of the pits of the Fire.

82. We believe in being brought back to life after death and in being  re-
compensed for our actions on the Day of Judgement, and al-'Ard,  having
been shown them and al-Hisab, brought to account for them. And  Qira'at
al-Kitab, reading the book, and the reward or punishments and in  
al-Sirat (the Bridge) and al-Mizan (the Balance).

83. The Garden
and the Fire are created things that never come to an end  and we
believe that Allah created them before the rest of creation and  then
created people to inhabit each of them. Whoever He wills goes to  the
Garden out of His Bounty and whoever He wills goes to the Fire  through
His justice.

Everybody acts in accordance with what is destined for him and goes towards what he has been created for.

84. Good and evil have both been decreed for people.

85. The capability in terms of Tawfiq (Divine Grace and Favour) which  
makes an action certain to occur cannot be ascribed to a created being.  This capability is integral with action, whereas the capability of an  
action in terms of having the necessary health, and ability, being in a  position to act and having the necessary means, exists in a person  
before the action. It is this type of capability which is the object of  the dictates of Shariah. Allah the Exalted says: 'Allah does not charge a  person except according to his ability'. (al-Baqarah 2: 286)

86. People's actions are created by Allah but earned by people .

87. Allah, the Exalted, has only charged people with what they are able  to do and people are only capable to do what Allah has favoured them.  
This is the explanation of the phrase: 'There is no power and no  
strength except by Allah.' We add to this that there is no stratagem or  way by which anyone can avoid or escape disobedience to Allah except  
with Allah's help; nor does anyone have the strength to put obedience to Allah into practice and remain firm in it, except if Allah makes it  
possible for them to do so.

88. Everything happens according to
Allah's will, knowledge,  predestination and decree. His will overpowers all other wills and His  decree overpowers all stratagems. He does
whatever He wills and He is  never unjust. He is exalted in His purity
above any evil or perdition  and He is perfect far beyond any fault or
flaw. 'He will not be asked  about what He does but they will he asked.' (al-Anbiya' 21: 23)

89. There is benefit for dead people in the supplication and alms-giving of the living.

90. Allah responds to people's supplications and gives them what they ask for.

91. Allah has absolute control over everything and nothing has any  control over Him. Nothing can be independent of Allah even for the  blinking of an eye, and whoever considers himself independent of Allah  for the
blinking of an eye is guilty of unbelief and becomes one of the  people
of perdition.

92. Allah is angered and can be pleased but not in the same way as any creature.

93. We love the Companions of the Messenger of Allah but we do not go to  
excess in our love for any one individual among them nor do we disown  
any one of them. We hate anyone who hates them or does not speak well of them and we only speak well of them. Love of them is a part of Islam,  part of belief and part of excellent behaviour, while hatred of them is unbelief, hypocrisy and rebelliousness.

94. We confirm that,
after the death of the Messenger of Allah, may  Allah bless him and
grant him peace, the caliphate went first to Abu  Bakr al-Siddiq, may
Allah be pleased with him, thus proving his  excellence and superiority
over the rest of the Muslims; then to 'Umar  ibn alKhattab, may Allah be pleased with him; then to 'Uthman, may Allah  be pleased with him; and
then to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, may Allah be  pleased with him. These are
the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and upright  leaders.

95. We bear
witness that the ten who were named by the Messenger of  Allah, may
Allah bless him and grant him peace, and who were promised  the Garden
by him, will be in the Garden, as the Messenger of Allah, may  Allah
bless him and grant him peace, whose word is truth, bore witness  that
they would he. The ten are: Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, 'Ali, Talhah,  
Zubayr, Sa'd, Sa'id, 'Abdur-Rahman ibn 'Awf and Abu 'Ubaydah ibn  
al-Jarrah whose title was the trustee of this Ummah, may Allah be  
pleased with all of them.

96. Anyone who speaks well of the
Companions of the Messenger of Allah,  may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his wives and offspring,  who are all pure and untainted by
any impurity, is free from the  accusation of hypocrisy.

97. The
learned men of the first community and those who followed in  their
footsteps - the people of virtue, the narrators of the Ahadith,  the
jurists and analysts- they must only be spoken about in the best way  
and anyone who says anything bad about them is not on the right path.

98. We do not prefer any of the saintly men among the Ummah over any of  
the Prophets but rather we say that any one of the Prophets is better  
than all the awliya' put together.

99. We believe in what we know of Karamat, the marvels of the awliya'  and in authentic stories about
them from trustworthy sources.

100. We believe in the signs of
the Hour such as the appearance of the  Dajjal and the descent of 'Isa
ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, from  heaven and we believe in the rising of the sun from where it sets and in  the emergence of the Beast from
the earth.

101. We do not accept as true what soothsayers and
fortune-tellers say,  nor do we accept the claims of those who affirm
anything which goes  against the Book, the Sunnah and the consensus of
the Muslim Ummah.

102. We agree that holding together is the true and right path and that separation is deviation and torment.

103. There is only one religion of Allah in the heavens and the earth  and
that is the religion of Islam. Allah says: 'Surely religion in the  
sight of Allah is Islam'. (Al 'Imran 3: 19) And He also says: 'I am  
pleased with Islam as a religion for you'. (al-Matidah 5: 3)

104. Islam lies between going to excess and falling short, between  Tashbih
(likening of Allah's attributes to anything else), and Ta+til  (denying
Allah's attributes), between fatalism and refusing decree as  proceeding from Allah and between certainty (without being conscious of  Allah's
reckoning) and despair (of Allah's mercy).

105. This is our
religion and it is what we believe in, both inwardly  and outwardly, and we renounce any connection, before Allah, with anyone  who goes against what we have said and made clear.



We ask Allah to make
us firm in our belief and seal our lives with it  and to protect us from variant ideas, scattering opinions and evil  schools of view such as
those of the Mushabbihah, the Mu'tazilah, the  Jahmiyyah the Jabriyah,
the Qadriyah and others like them who go against  the Sunnah and Jama'ah and have allied themselves with error. We  renounce any connection with them and in our opinion they are in error  and on the path of
destruction.
We ask Allah to protect us from all falsehood and we ask His Grace and Favour to do all good.                                
__________________

Muhammed Ibn Ulaysh Al-Maaliki
 
 
 
 
 
 
Surah Isra 17 verse 80 Say: "O my Lord! let my entry be by the Gate of Truth and Honor and likewise my exit by the Gate of Truth and Honor; and grant me from Thy Presence an authority to aid (me)." 

Ameen.
 
Transliteration :Wa qur rabbi adkhilni mudkhala sidqiw wa akhrijni mukhraja sidqiw wa-j'al li mil ladunka sulta_nan nasira_(n).

Al-Tirmidhi HadithHadith 2482 Narrated by AbuHurayrah  (May Allah be pleased with him)
Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) used to say, " O Allah, grant me benefit in what Thou hast taught me, teach me what will benefit me, and increase my knowledge. Praise be to Allah in all circumstances. I seek refuge in Allah from the state of those who go to Hell."
Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah transmitted it, Tirmidhi saying this is a tradition whose isnad is gharib.
 
Transliteration:an Abi Hurairah (radiya Allahu anhu) qaal:
qaala Rasul Allah (salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam):"Allahumma infa'ni bima 'allamtani, wa allimni maa yanfa'oni wa zidni 'ilman, alhamdulillahi alaa kolli haal, wa a'odtho billahi min haali ahlil naar."

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