with the people of hadith, and whenever they mention a hadith from the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, I reject it, so they say: You are a disbeliever.'

He said: 'They spoke the truth!! If they mention a hadith from the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, and you reject it, they will say: You are a disbeliever.'

He said: 'So what should I do?'

He said: 'If they mention a hadith of the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, say: You have spoken the truth. Then strike it with a defect, and say: It has a defect.'

[Al-Sunna by al-Khallāl (1734)].

• Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, said in Al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Mursala (1/216): "And the Jahmiyya... took the paths of their brothers among the Jews in distorting the textual evidences reported regarding the attributes. When they were unable to distort the textual evidences of the Qurʾān, they distorted their meanings, assaulted them, and opened the door of interpretation for every heretic plotting against the religion." End quote.

I say: Whoever looks into most of the later works of Tafsir and hadith commentaries will find that their authors have taken the path of the Marīsiyya in negating the attributes of God Almighty and distorting them from their apparent meaning. Furthermore, they even condemn those who affirm them, believe in their implications, and take them upon their apparent meaning, as has preceded in the quotation of many of their statements in the footnotes of this book. The strangest thing in them is their recounting of a disagreement regarding declaring as disbelievers those who take the path of the people of the Sunna in affirming the reality of the attributes.

Here is the Ashʿarite al-Qurṭubī, Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. Ibrāhīm (d. 656 AH), the Mālikī, author of Al-Mufhim limā Ashkala min Talkhīṣ Kitāb Muslim, saying (6/670): "His statement: 'If you see those who follow what is ambiguous thereof, they are the ones whom God has named, so beware of them,' means: they follow it and gather it seeking to cast doubt upon the Qurʾān and to misguide the commoners, as was done by the heretics (zanādiqa) and the Qarmatians who attack the Qurʾān. Or seeking to believe in the apparent meanings of the ambiguous, as was done by the anthropomorphists (mujassima) who gathered what occurred in the Book and the Sunna whose apparent meaning gives the illusion of corporeality, until they believed that the Creator, Exalted is He, is a corporeal body and a fashioned image possessing a face, an eye, a hand, a side, a foot, and a finger—exalted is God above that. Thus, the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, warned against following their path.

As for the first category: there is no doubt in their disbelief, and that God's ruling regarding them is execution without seeking their repentance.