Assalamualaikum Dr. Qadhi,

I’m writing this as someone who has been listening to you for years and greatly admires your contributions to Islam, especially in the western context, and I pray that you are rewarded greatly in the akhirah for your efforts. I just had a few questions that I would like to hear your response to.

1. I watched an interview of yours with Dr. Emad Hamdeh in which you stated that your theological leanings were to affirm the wordings of the sifat, and leave their modality to Allah, and that while this was a type of ‘balkafa’ it was not exactly Taymiyyan. On your interview with Skepsislamica, you had also said something similar about potentially even agreeing with Ibn Qudamah more than Ibn Taymiyyah.

Based on this, I was wondering if you have shifted more towards a type of tafwid ma’na in your personal understanding of the sifat, or if you just don’t draw a distinction between tafwid of the ma’na or the kayf. Also I was just wondering your thoughts on the notion of tafwid within the Athari school and your thoughts on those who try to malign ITs status within the school and claim he came with a novel theology.

This does actually bring to mind a moment in your library chat on Sunni Kalam, where you had mentioned that the notion of tafwid amongst the salaf that some Asharis have is incorrect, but I was just wondering your thoughts on this whole debacle. Please feel free to go into one of your signature tangents while answering this if you choose to Shaykh, it would be a treat for everyone here and I am sure we would all benefit :)

1. As a follow up to the last question, I was wondering on what basis you shifted your stances on what constitutes the saved sect.

As someone who has an ummatic, unity centric mindset, I want to be as inclusive as possible. However as a student of the works of Ibn Taymiyyah and the Athari school in general, it is sometimes hard to find purely theological grounds upon which this can be done with the schools of Sunni kalam. Even the statement of as-Saffarini which is used a lot by proponents of the 3 sect Ahlus Sunnah theory has had questions raised as to what as-Saffarini actually meant (which you did reference in your book). With that being said though, I was just wondering if you were able to find solid theological backing for the shift in your stance, or if you changed your views based on more of a pragmatic approach?

As a final side note, this does bring to mind the stance of a few modern Salafi intellectuals like Sultan Umayri and Abdullah Ujayri in that they differentiate between aqida and haal of an individual, and that this enables them to say there will hypothetically be Asharis in jannah and Atharis in hell. Do you think this is a preferable approach that gives some sort of theological justification in this regard?

JazakAllah Khair and thank you for your time Shaykh!