KIRAMIYAH كرامية
A sect of Muslim founded by Muhammad ibn Karim, and called also the Mujassiyah, or Corporealists, because they admitted not only a resemblance between God and created beings, but declared him to be corporeal substance.
“The more sober among them, indeed, when they applied the word body to God, would be understood to mean that He is a self-subsisting being, which with them is the definition of body; but yet some of them affirmed him to be finite, and circumscribed either on all sides, or on some only (as beneath, for example), according to different opinions; and others allowed that He might be felt by the hand, and seen by the eye. Nay, one Davide al-Jawari went so far as to say that His deity was a body composed of flesh and blood, and that He had members, as hands, feet, a head, a tongue, eyes, and ears; but that he was a body, however, not like other bodies, neither was he like to any created being. He is also said, further, to have affirmed that from the crown of the head to the breast he was hollow, and from the breast downward solid, and that He had black curled hair. These most blasphemous and monstrous notions were the consequence of the literal acceptation of those passages in the Koran (Surahs xl. 10; xx. 4; ii. 109), which figuratively attribute corporeal actions to God, and of the words of Muhammad, when he said that God created man in His own image, and that he himself had felt the fingers of God, which He laid on his back, to be cold; besides which, this sect are charged with fathering on their Prophet a great number of spurious and forged traditions to support their opinion, the greater part whereof they borrowed from the jews, who are accused as naturally prone to assimilate God to men, so that they describe Him as weeping for Noah’s flood till His eyes were sore.” (Sale.)
A sect of Muslim founded by Muhammad ibn Karim, and called also the Mujassiyah, or Corporealists, because they admitted not only a resemblance between God and created beings, but declared him to be corporeal substance.
“The more sober among them, indeed, when they applied the word body to God, would be understood to mean that He is a self-subsisting being, which with them is the definition of body; but yet some of them affirmed him to be finite, and circumscribed either on all sides, or on some only (as beneath, for example), according to different opinions; and others allowed that He might be felt by the hand, and seen by the eye. Nay, one Davide al-Jawari went so far as to say that His deity was a body composed of flesh and blood, and that He had members, as hands, feet, a head, a tongue, eyes, and ears; but that he was a body, however, not like other bodies, neither was he like to any created being. He is also said, further, to have affirmed that from the crown of the head to the breast he was hollow, and from the breast downward solid, and that He had black curled hair. These most blasphemous and monstrous notions were the consequence of the literal acceptation of those passages in the Koran (Surahs xl. 10; xx. 4; ii. 109), which figuratively attribute corporeal actions to God, and of the words of Muhammad, when he said that God created man in His own image, and that he himself had felt the fingers of God, which He laid on his back, to be cold; besides which, this sect are charged with fathering on their Prophet a great number of spurious and forged traditions to support their opinion, the greater part whereof they borrowed from the jews, who are accused as naturally prone to assimilate God to men, so that they describe Him as weeping for Noah’s flood till His eyes were sore.” (Sale.)
Based on Hughes, Dictionary of Islam
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