A Reply to the Objection Against Taqwiyat al-Iman

Question

Question: What do the scholars of the religion say on this matter: the innovators (mubtadi‘un) raise a strong objection against the following passage of the book “Taqwiyat al-Iman” — namely, that the rank of every creature before Allah is like the rank of a cobbler before a king (malik). The word “every” (kull) here expresses nothing other than a universal affirmative proposition (ijab kulli).

Answer

“Malik” [in this analogy] means a king. It is obvious that a king and all his subjects are individuals of one species; the generic universal (kulli tabi‘i) is shared by all of them, and this sharing is by way of univocal predication (tawatu’), not by way of gradational predication (tashkik); there is unity in [their] matter (hayula)

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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