Does the Ashʿarī Stance on Cause and Effect Justify Calling Upon Saints?
Below is a partial translation of a telegram post written by Ustadh Alaa’ Hasan.
According to the Ashʿarī school, is it permissible to invoke beings other than Allah based on the argument that causes have no inherent effect and that Allah alone is the true agent?
The answer is that invoking other than Allah is not permissible according to the Ashʿarīs, nor according to any school within Islam. Rather, it is an esoteric (bāṭinī) belief that was adopted by some of those who opposed the Wahhābī movement, such as Ibn Jirjīs, al-Zaynī Daḥlān, al-ʿArabī al-Tibbānī, and others. As for the Ashʿarīs, they do not adhere to this extreme doctrine, nor does their school contain anything that justifies such an act.
This is because they affirm that actions occur alongside causes, not through them. The Ashʿarīs do not deny the existence of tangible causes, nor do they reject the customary relationship between causes and their effects.
In their view, causes do not possess inherent efficacy, yet they remain customarily associated with their effects.
Thus, according to their madhab, it would be incorrect for someone to say, “I quench my thirst with fire,” because fire is not a customary cause for quenching thirst, unlike water, which is habitually recognized as a means of quenching thirst—even if it does not have inherent efficacy.
When applying this principle to the issue of invoking other than Allah, we find that an absent saint (walī ghāʾib) is not a reasonable candidate for a tangible cause, as there is no established custom whereby healing occurs upon invoking him. Causes have known and recognized contexts in which Allah ordains their effects rather than merely attaching oneself to anything arbitrarily.
For this reason, seeking healing from a doctor or taking medicine does not contradict the Ashʿarī doctrine, as it is customary that Allah has made healing occur through these means. However, He has not made healing occur through turning to the deceased. Were such an act legitimate, then it would be just as logical for Ashʿarīs to seek to quench their thirst from fire instead of water or to seek wealth from pebbles instead of money!
From this perspective, no rational person adhering to the Ashʿarī school could say, “I will ask the absent saint to heal and cure me,” because this would fall outside the scope of recognized and probable causes. It would amount to a form of illusion and fantasy, which neither reason nor Islamic law endorses.
As for the extremists who cite the verse, “And provide for them from it and clothe them” (al-Nisāʾ: 5), and the ḥadīth, “Whoever revives dead land, it is his,” arguing that sustenance (rizq) and giving life (iḥyāʾ) have been attributed to human beings—then audaciously ask, “What is the difference between seeking sustenance and life from Allah and seeking them from others?”—this reasoning closely resembles the doctrines of the Bāṭiniyyah and Ḥulūliyyah, who fail to distinguish between the station of the Lord and the station of the servant.
We respond to them: The ḥadīth states, “Give the worker his due wage,” yet Allah is al-Muʿṭī (the true giver). Does this mean that your act of giving to the worker is the same as Allah’s act of giving?
This is a glaring logical fallacy. Classical rhetoricians (balāghiyyūn) stipulated that whenever an action is attributed to a human, there must be a contextual indicator (qarīnah) that prevents misunderstanding. Such an indicator is present in the Qurʾānic and Prophetic texts. A human being physically hands wages to a worker, owns the wealth he gives, and directly causes provision to reach others. In contrast, the deceased possesses no tangible means to fulfill a request.
The greater error lies in equating divine actions with limited human causes. When Allah attributes giving (ʿaṭāʾ) to a servant, He does not attribute to him the power to bless that provision. Thus, one does not ask an ordinary person to bless their wealth, nor does one ask a doctor for a cure that leaves no illness behind—because such matters belong exclusively to Allah. To conflate human and divine actions in this way is the doctrine of the Ittiḥādiyyah (pantheists), not that of the Ashʿarīs.
Contemporary Ashʿarīs must abandon this absurd argument, which contradicts language, reason, and Islamic law. In fact, if the common people heard it, they would laugh at the one making such a claim!
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Speaking of pantheism I was hoping you could shed light on the doctrine of Wahdat al Wujud. Is there a safe position?