...am Allah, there is no deity except Me]’ [Taha: 14] is created, then he is a disbeliever.”
Yahya al-Himmani narrated this to me, on the authority of al-Hasan ibn al-Rabi‘, on the authority of Ibn al-Mubarak.
Thus, Ibn al-Mubarak disliked relating their speech before they publicized it; however, once they publicized it, he denounced them and censured them for it.
Similarly, Ibn Hanbal said: “We were of the view that silence regarding this matter was appropriate before these people engaged in it. But when they made it manifest, we found no alternative but to oppose them and refute them.”
He [al-Darimi] also stated (may Allah have mercy upon him) in al-Radd ‘ala al-Jahmiyyah (p. 358): “We utilized these arguments and their like against some of those Waqifah (Neutralists). Their primary argument against us in that regard was their claim that: ‘Certain masters among the Hadith narrators—whom we recognized as having little insight into the doctrines of the Jahmiyyah—were questioned about the Quran and responded: “We do not subscribe to either of the two positions,” and they withheld judgment since they did not grasp the intent of those people.’ This was because it was a sophisticated fallacy (ughlutah) that reached their ears, the interpretation of which they did not know, nor had they been tested by it previously; thus they refrained from answering and withheld their opinion.
However, when it reached the ears of others who possessed insight into them, their discourse, and their intent—those who had sat with them, debated them, and heard the repulsiveness of their speech, such as those we have named, like Ja‘far ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn, Ibn al-Mubarak, ‘Isa ibn Yunus, al-Qasim al-Jazari, Baqiyyah ibn al-Walid, al-Mu‘afa ibn ‘Imran, and their peers among those with insight into the speech of the Jahmiyyah—they did not doubt that it was a word of disbelief (kufr). They affirmed that the Quran is the very Speech of Allah, just as Allah, Blessed and Exalted be He, stated, and that it is uncreated, since Allah refuted...”
