Jahmism

Jahmism (Arabic: الجهمية, romanized: al-Jahmiyya), is a term used by Islamic scholars to refer to the followers of the doctrines of Jahm bin Safwan (d. 128/746). The Jahmiyya particularly came to be remembered as advocates for the negation of God's divine attributes as part of God's essence (known as the doctrine of taʿṭīl) and have been described as a form of natural theology.

The Jahmites hold that God is utterly unique and the sole cause behind the created world. They denied the presence of essence within things and rejected theories of causation and propose that every moment is created by God anew, giving rise to the illusion of causation by association. The Jahmites were empiricists, and held the opinion that only the immediately perceived reality is real. Since the Jahmites reject eternity and reality of all of creation, the Jahmites also advocated that paradise and hell will eventually perish. Some doctrines of the Jahmites – such as God's transcendence and their insistence on the impermanence of creation – may be comparable to Buddhism.

Jahm and those associated with his creed are criticized for atheism by Hanbalites and Salafis.

The eponymous figure behind the Jahmiyya was Jahm ibn Safwan. Jahm was born in Samarkand. He lived and taught in northeastern Iran and it is possibly that he did not ever leave the region of Greater Khorasan. The second figure most commonly associated with the Jahmis was the Kufan Ḍirār ibn ʻAmr. However, despite his association with the Jahmiyya, he may have never met Jahm and even criticized him in one of his works. No writings from either authors have survived, and information about their views relies on short summaries produced by other authors, primarily their opponents.

Another famous preacher of Jahmi views was Bishr al-Marisi (d. 833), at the beginning of the 9th century, Jahmites acted in Nehavend, but some of them were forced to accept the teachings of the Asharites.

The Jahmites are possibly the first Muslims who formulated a systematic theology. For the Jahmites, God is wholly other and imcomparable, removed from every conceptualization or description by humans. Jahmi derives his doctrine from his epistemology: since all conceptualization are derived from the created world, there is no way to envision God. The lack of attributes to God brought him the accusation of denial of God. However, because everything what happens in this world - including what is done by living beings - are God's actions, Jahmite's concept of God is that of pervading everything, even though not mixed and the object of worship remains transcendent. Jahms did not deny that the attributes of God are real or a thing, but argues that God is not a thing.

The concept of God is tied to Jahmite's epistemology: The Jahmites were empiricists, upholding a form of natural theology. Furthermore, they rejected that there is any causation between different events. Instead, there is no causation only association. An example of this belief is illustrated by al-Jahiz: In his discussion about causation, he refers to a group of people those views are said to derive from the Jahmites. Accordingly, his opponents held that there is no quality within an object. For example, there is no fire within a flinch, but the fire is created. Likewise, there is no blood in a body, but blood is created when the body is opened and no water in the skin until touched. For the Jahmites, perceived reality is thus mind-dependent.

Jahm's rejection of God as a thing has been compared to the Neo-Platonic conception of God as "the One". However, Jahm's philosophy differs from Neo-Platonism in many major themes: According to Jahm's there are no incorporeal existences besides God. This also sets them apart from the Mu'tazilites. Furthermore, Jahm's epistemology is empiricistic not rationalistic. The created world is, for the Jahmites, ultimately unreal, as only God can be considered real. For the Neo-Platonists, the sub-lunar world is, even if a product by an incomprehensible God, not lacking reality.