[534] The sects may be distinguished by the names of their founders, and called _Hanefites_, _Asharian_, _Keramían_, _Shafeites_, etc.; or by the nature of their doctrine, and named _Sefatian_, “attributists;” _Matazalah_, “separatists;” _Mashabian_, or _Tasbiah_, “assimilators,” etc.; or by their relation to some established doctrine or community, and then entitled _Rafs_, “heretics;” _Navaseb_, “enemies;” finally, these sorts of distinctions may be mixed. No doubt, these various classifications burden the memory with a great number of names which may create confusion. I am sparing in introducing others than those which are in the text of the Dabistan. According to those distinctions, their number may be diversely stated. We have already seen the principal sects reckoned to be _four_; here above are reckoned _six_; the author of _Sharh-ol Mowakef_ (Pocock, p. 209) enumerates _eight_ principal sects.
[535] From تعطيل _tâtíl_, “neglecting, causing to be unemployed, rendering useless, vacation.” Rigorously they are perhaps not to be declared atheists, as above: for their creed consists rather in denying the attributes of God, and in presenting him as inaccessible to human intelligence and strange to the government of the world, than in denying positively his existence.――(See _Chrestomathie Arabe_, tome II. p. 96, by _Silvestre de Sacy_.)
[536] The scholastics among the Muhammedans employ in their discussions principally two words: القضا, _al ka[:z]a_, and القدر, _al kadr_, necessarily annexed to each other, but still distinct by a nice sense particular to each: _al ka[:z]á_ signifies God’s universal and eternal judgment or decree, by which the particular things are created and disposed so as they are to remain to all the ages of eternity; _al kadr_ means God’s will in bringing forth, at a determined time and by a determined cause, things in their proper measure and fixed proportion with regard to their essence as well as to their condition.――(_Pocock_, first edit., pp. 207-209.)
[537] There are three principal opinions about the decrees of God, and the power of man with regard to his actions, among the Muhammedans.
The first is that of the _Motazalahs_, according to which man is the agent in good and evil, in faith, and infidelity, in obedience and rebellion; all his actions are his; for it could not be said to man, “Act,” if he had not the faculty of acting. Evil and iniquity can by no means be attributed to God; an infidel is composed of a man and of infidelity: God created the first, but not the latter.