Some Hadiths Subjected to Discussion by Supporters of Bishr al-Marisi Due to Having an Anthropormorphist and Corporealist Content

Abstract

Hadiths that have been discussed in this paper consist of narrations regarding divine attributes and having some problematic meanings between supporters of Bishr al-Marisi and Uthman al-Darimi. These narrations were mostly accepted denounced (munkar) by Bishr al-Marisi and his supporters due to having an anthropormophist and corporealist content about God. They rejected divine attributes according to their understanding of God based on incomparability (tanzih) which provided by Mutazilite approach towards divine attributes even though they conveyed some features of Ahl al-Ra'y. They found contradicted of attributing human features to God based on their tanzih understanding, therefore, they interpreted such this kind of narrations in terms of their approach or rejected at all. At the other hand, a hard Hadith scholar. Uthman al-Darimi believed that one should accept divine attributes as they are in the Quran and Sunna. According to his belief, he considered the explicit meanings of the narrations without interpretation of divine attributes, and based on his perspective he denied Bishr al-Marisi (d. 218 / 833) and his supporters' interpretations claiming they would cause divesting God of all attributes (tatil). He argues that these narrations should be taken into considerations based on their explicit meanings. The discussions on these Hadiths are important due to showing different approaches of scholars from the schools of Ahl al-Ray and the ones from Ahl al-Hadith towards the hadith during the period when the main hadith works were collected. Discussions on the narrations studied in this paper reveal two schools' understandings of divine issues, their approaches to divine attributes, as well inform us their perspectives of hadith in general.