Did Early Islamic Scholars Believe Prophets Could Err? — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/07/did-early-islamic-scholars-believe-prophets-could-err/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as a comment on r/AcademicQuran, in the thread “Did early Islamic scholars believe that prophets could make mistakes?”, copied here as written.
Total infallibility may have been an Ash’arite development as Ash’arites argued that Prophets must be totally reliable with respect to dispersing religious knowledge. This formula is exemplified in beginner Ash’ari works such as ibn Ashir’s al-Murshid al-Mu’in.
Revivalist Athari ibn Taymiyyah argued that Prophets were, in fact, capable of sin based on Qur’anic texts and hadith.
I don’t think early Islamic scholars discussed this issue in depth, leading to Ash’aris developing the concept of total infallibility (besides non-sinful mistakes or choosing the lesser of two good options; khilāf al-ūla) and later Atharis, following ibn Taymiyyah, pushing back on this concept.
When Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wah’hab included a hadith that suggests Adam & Hawa fell into shirk to explain a verse of the Qur’an in his Kitab al-Tawhid, Ash’aris went so far as to imply that including such a hadith is tantamount to shirk itself. The reasoning being that the infallibility (isma) of the Prophets in religious issues implicates their reliability in relaying religious knowledge. If Adam, or any other prophet, was capable of shirk – none of the prophets are “reliable.”
Posted July 21, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
Find me on Reddit, YouTube, Letterboxd and Linktree; more of my work is on my portfolio, alishukriamin.com.
Read this post on aliamin.info, or browse all my writing.