The Murji'a and the Jahmiyya: Ancient Errors With Modern Relevance

The Murji'a: Faith Without Deeds

The Murji'a (those who postpone) held that faith (iman) is purely in the heart: that deeds neither increase nor decrease it, and that a person who declares the shahada is a believer regardless of what they do. They derived their name from irja (postponement) the idea that the judgment of a sinner is postponed entirely to God, with no earthly consequence for faith.

Their error: the Quran and Sunnah are explicit that faith increases with obedience and decreases with sin. The Quran says: "The believers are only those who, when God is mentioned, their hearts tremble, and when His verses are recited to them, it increases them in faith." (8:2). The Prophet ﷺ said: "A person does not commit zina while they are a believer at the moment of committing it.", meaning faith and major sin are incompatible in their fullness.

The Murji'a position, if accepted, produces a community where sin has no consequence for religious identity, where a person can live in complete contradiction of Islamic obligations and still consider themselves a full believer. This is a practical disaster for Islamic community life.

The contemporary relevance: the argument that "faith is in the heart" and that external practice does not affect one's standing as a Muslim is a form of Murji'a reasoning. It is used to justify the abandonment of Islamic obligations, the normalisation of public sin, and the dismissal of the obligation to enjoin good and forbid evil.

The Murji'a's Own Argument

The Murji'a had an argument worth engaging: they held that their position protected against the Kharijite error of excommunicating sinners and destabilising the community. Making sin a basis for removing someone from the fold of Islam was the Kharijite mistake; the Murji'a believed deferring all judgement to Allah in the Hereafter avoided that error. The Sunni response is that this is a false dilemma. The correct position is that faith increases through obedience and decreases through disobedience without either extreme: deeds do not nullify faith entirely (the Kharijite error) nor are deeds irrelevant to faith's reality and strength (the Murji'a error). The middle position is not a compromise between two errors but a third, distinct position rooted in the evidence.

The Jahmiyya: Denying God's Attributes

The Jahmiyya traced to Jahm ibn Safwan (d. 745 CE) and held that God has no positive attributes: that nothing can be affirmed about God because any affirmation would limit Him. This position, taken to its logical conclusion, produces a God who cannot be described, known, or related to in any meaningful way.

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal considered the Jahmiyya among the most dangerous deviant groups and wrote specifically against them. Ibn Taymiyyah devoted extensive work to refuting their theological framework.

Their connection to the Mu'tazila: the Mu'tazila's created Quran doctrine was a form of Jahmi reasoning applied to the divine speech. The denial of divine attributes was the broader framework of which the created Quran was a specific application.

The contemporary relevance: any theological framework that systematically strips meaning from the divine attributes established in the Quran and Sunnah (treating them all as metaphors that tell us nothing concrete about God) is operating in the Jahmi tradition, regardless of whether it uses that name.