He said: 'The Jahmiyya did not intend this; rather, they intended to:

a) Deny that the Most Merciful rose over the Throne.

b) And they intended to deny that God Almighty spoke to Moses, while God Almighty said: {And God spoke directly to Moses} [Al-Nisāʾ: 164].

c) And they intended to deny that the Qurʾān is the speech of God Almighty.

I am of the view that they should be asked to repent; if they repent [so be it], otherwise their necks should be struck.' [Al-Asmāʾ wa-al-Ṣifāt (546)]

6- Their distortion of the textual evidences regarding the attributes of God Almighty.

The later Ashʿarites are unanimously agreed upon distorting the attributes of God Almighty and nullifying their reality, which they call "interpretation (taʾwīl)." In reality, it is distortion, denial, and rejection of them. They took this path out of fear of being exposed before the commoners and the elite, so they resorted to keeping the wordings of the textual evidences of the attributes as they are, while overpowering their meanings through distortion and innovated interpretation, which inherently contains a denial of them. As Ibn Manda, may Allah have mercy on him, said in his book Al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyya: "Interpretation according to the people of hadith is a form of denial." End quote.

This is the directive of their greatest Imam, Bishr al-Marīsī—may God disgrace him—from whom they took the distortion and negation of the textual evidences of the attributes.

ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, may Allah have mercy on him, said in Al-Naqḍ (p. 558): "It has reached us that some of the companions of al-Marīsī said to him: 'What do you do with these excellent chains of transmission that they use as evidence against us to refute our school of law, which cannot be denied? Such as: Sufyān from Manṣūr from al-Zuhrī; al-Zuhrī from Sālim; Ayyūb and Ibn ʿAwn from Ibn Sīrīn; and ʿAmr b. Dīnār from Jābir from the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, and the like?'

So al-Marīsī said: 'Do not reject it, lest you be exposed; rather, mislead them with interpretation, so that you will have rejected it gently since you could not reject it forcefully.'

And from al-Ḥasan b. al-Bazzār, who said: A man came to al-Marīsī and said: 'O Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, I discuss