a believer.' This is a Sahih Hadith narrated by Muslim. End quote.
I say: According to him, if a Jew utters the word of Monotheism (Tawhid) while believing that Allah the Exalted is in the heaven, he is considered an anthropomorphist (mujassim)—and an anthropomorphist in their view is a disbeliever—whose utterance of the Testimony of Faith (Shahada) is not accepted from him unless he is ignorant of the creed of the anthropomorphists, much like the case of the black slave girl whose statement the Prophet ﷺ accepted only because she was supposedly ignorant of the anthropomorphists' creed! We seek refuge in Allah from such [a position].
In contrast, the Imams of the Sunnah state what al-Darimi (may Allah have mercy on him) said in al-Radd ‘ala al-Jahmiyyah (63): "The Hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ contains evidence that if a person does not know that Allah, the Mighty and Sublime, is in the heaven and not on the earth, he is not a believer. Even if he were a slave to be manumitted, he would not suffice as a 'believing slave' since he does not know that Allah is in the heaven. Do you not see that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ established her knowledge that Allah is in the heaven as the sign of her faith?" End quote.
Al-Qurtubi the Ash‘ari, Ahmad ibn ‘Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Maliki (d. 656 AH), said in al-Mufhim lima Ashkala min Talkhis Kitab Muslim (6/670): "His statement: 'If you see those who follow what is ambiguous of it, those are the ones whom Allah has named, so beware of them,' means: they follow it and compile it seeking to cast doubt on the Qur’an and to misguide the masses, as was done by the heretics (zanadiqa) and the Qarmatians who slandered the Qur’an.
Or they do so seeking to believe in the literal meanings of the ambiguous (mutashabih) verses, as was done by the anthropomorphists (al-Mujassimah) who compiled what occurs in the Book and the Sunnah whose literal appearance suggests corporeality (al-jismiyyah), until they believed that the Creator, the Exalted, is a corporeal body and a formed image possessing a face, an eye, a hand, a side, a leg, and a finger—Exalted is Allah far above that. Thus, the Prophet ﷺ warned against following their path."
