And I say, and with Allah is success:
1 - I do not know who is meant by the Predecessors (Salaf) according to him!! For their statements are numerous in affirming the sitting of the Lord Almighty upon His Throne, as is in the introduction.
2 - The imams of the people of the Sunna continuously mentioned this report and used it as evidence in their works in refuting the Jahmīs and the assimilators. So I do not know who among the imams of the people of the Sunna preceded al-Qaḥṭānī in rejecting this report, attacking it, and describing its speaker with anthropomorphism?!
And look at the statement of Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him: "Suppose that the denier of attributes belies (Kaʿb) and accuses him of anthropomorphism; then how did these eminent figures narrate it from him, affirming it and not rejecting it?" End quote.
[Mukhtaṣar al-Ṣawāʿiq (3/1075)]
3 - No one attacks this report—to my knowledge—except the Jahmīs who deny the attributes, those who cannot bear to hear these reports nor narrate them, such as the Jahmī al-Kawtharī, who attacked ʿAbdullāh bin Aḥmad bin Ḥanbal, may Allah have mercy on him, for narrating the report of Khārija in his book al-Sunna, and other reports indicating the affirmation of the attributes. Al-Kawtharī said, commenting as is the habit of the Jahmīs in labeling the people of the Sunna with anthropomorphism: "Has the speaker of these words left anything of idolatry and anthropomorphism?!"
I say: I cannot say to al-Qaḥṭānī, who agreed with (al-Kawtharī) in describing the speaker of this report with anthropomorphism, except what he himself said to al-Kawtharī in the introduction to his edition of al-Sunna (1/85):
("If the situation has reached the point that the one who transmitted to the Umma the book al-Sunna, al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya, al-Zuhd, and Faḍāʾil al-Ṣaḥāba is described as an idolatrous anthropomorphist, then let the world be ruined.")
4 - Al-Qaḥṭānī's description of Khārija as a liar is of no consequence here; for the man is stating his own belief regarding the establishment (istiwāʾ) that it is by sitting. He did not narrate from someone else such that his narration would be rejected on the claim of his lying!!
5 - Khārija bin Muṣʿab is not a liar according to the correct view among the statements of the scholars of discrediting and attestation, as al-Qaḥṭānī described him. Rather, it is lying in the sense of making a mistake and obfuscation (tadlīs), not intentional lying in narration. The man is truthful in narration, as Yaḥyā bin Yaḥyā said: "(He is) upright in hadith."
And Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī said, despite his strictness: "(His hadith) is written... his position was not that of
