Refuting Hamza Yusuf – Quantum Physics: Law of Included Middle

In a youtube video Hamza Yusuf claims that the Ash’aris make a logical contradiction when they say that Allah is neither said to be connected nor disconnected to the world. Hamza Yusuf seems to have a very superficial knowledge of the Ash’ari school.

Ash’aris would never violate the law of the excluded middle. The Ash’aris are extremely zealous about adherence to the principle of non-contradiction. In fact, they defined having a mind as adherence to this very principle! When they say that Allah is neither neither connected nor disconnected from the world they mean that He is neither said to be connected nor said to be disconnected, because both expressions imply physical existence and Allah is not physical – not in space, place, or a direction. For the same reason they say that Allah is neither a whole nor a part.

Ibn Taymiyyah attacked the Ash’aris because he was a materialist, so according to his premise, namely that anything that exists must be physical, the saying of the Ash’aris “neither connected nor disconnected” does violate the law of the excluded middle. It is a strawman. It is one of his debating tricks in defense of materialism/figure worship, nothing more.