Question:

Salamu Alaykum brothers. First of all, i love your site. It has almost every topic most of us need to know about and i love the fact that for everything you quote a proof especially sayings of the four imams.

My question is about Hallaj. I find some scholars they said he was a sufi, but some said that he used to believe in hulul?. What’s the Sunni Judgment on Hulul Belief and Hallaj?

Answer:

Bismillah, praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds, and we ask Allah to raise the rank of Prophet Muhammad and his kind Aal and companions.

Know that there are Sufism is asserted from Qur’an and Alsunna. However many today have strayed and use the name of Sufism, but they are full of misguidance. Some ignorant “Sufi-claimers” believe Allah unites with the creations so they misinterpret a hadith and say it means, “If Allah loves the slave then Allah becomes his hand, leg, ear, and eye.” Some of these “Sufi-claimers” believe Allah dwells in the slaves which is Hulul; and some others believe the universe is Allah, and every person, animal, or thing is a part of Him. One of them would even have the audacity to say about himself, “I am Allah.” And that all is kufur blasphemy.

As for al-Hallaj, who lived over 1000 years ago, he was amongst them. He also said he is Allah!! and so the scholars judged him as a blasphemer and not a sufi. Those who believe in Hulul or Wahdat al-Wujud are not true sufis, nor Muslims. If one of those “Sufi-claimers” goes to visit a friend and is asked who is at the door, he might say, “Allah,” because he believes that Allah dwells in the bodies.

Some of those blasphemers who say Allah unites with His creation said, “The Christians committed blasphemy because they limited Allah to the body of ^Isa and the body of Jibril.” They said, “Had the Christians generalized and said, ‘Allah is in all things,’ they would have escaped blasphemy.” May Allah protect us from their evil.

Shaykh Zayni Dahlan, who was the Mufti of the Shafi^iyy school in Makkah more than one hundred years ago, pronounced the one who holds such a belief (Hulu) a blasphemer and in this he agreed with Shaykh Ibn Hajar, who lived more than 300 years before him.

Al-Qadi ^Iyad also pronounced them as blasphemers and conveyed the consensus (ijma^) on their blasphemy.

Shaykh ^Izzud-Din Ibnu ^Abdis-Salam, Fakhurd-Din ar-Raziyy, as-Suyutiyy, al-Junayd, Shaykh Abul Huda as-Sayyadiyy al-Baghdadiyy, and ar-Rifa^iyy all pronounced them as blasphemers.

Imam Ahmad ar-Rifa^iyy said: “Had al-Hallaj been on the right path, he would not have said, ‘I am Allah’.”

Please use our search tool, We have few posts on this topic and refutations to Hulul.

And Allah knows best.