The Jabriya Sect

بسم الله الرحمـن الرحيم

والعاقبة للمتّقين

The Jabriya are among the worst, misguided sects that appeared from the Umma of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, i.e., from among the Muslims. They essentially ascribe all acts to Allah Himself, and deny any free will or choice for the creation, i.e., human beings. At times one may hear preachers of the Jama’at-ut-Tabligh (Kandhelwi – Deobandi sect) in the mosque make irresponsible statements such as “Allah is the Doer of everything” or “Allah is doing everything”. These are statements characterized by the Bid’a of Jabr. The more hardcore Jabrite was the severe heretic Jahm b. Safwan (d. 745 CE). He denied the fact that humans possess power, that they can be agents or create, or that they have the capability to act. He also denied will and choice for humans, who to him were nothing but inanimate objects. He argued that deeds and actions are only attributed to the human being figuratively, like how it is said that a “tree bears fruit”.

Know that the blasphemy of the Jabriya lies in the fact that they attribute evil and unworthy deeds to Allah Most High, since they believe that all deeds are committed by Him and only attributed to the human figuratively.

The Ashari sect, who manufactured the absurd idea of occasionalism, deny secondary causation. This doctrine was pushed by al-Ghazzali: “God’s central role in everyday events is clearly seen in al Ghazali’s idea of continuous creation, or, in other words, that everything in the universe is created every moment. In order for an object to continue to exist, God must create it anew each moment. Objects, then, have nothing in their own nature that causes them to endure over time” (Harding, Karen. Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory). The Asharis therefore have something of the innovation of ‘Jabr’ within their theology and can be characterized as a neo-Jabrite sect.