and they stand as proof against all others—in transmission, in doctrine, and in their legal verdicts.

Rely upon Imām Mālik, for he encompassed all of that. In jurisprudence and fatwā the matter ends with him, as it does in the verification of reports and the learning of those who came before.

Among the corollaries: strike out whatever you find on the subject of analogy that is ascribed to Dāwūd, whether in a ledger or on a sheet of paper, for by such statements he shattered the consensus and departed from the Companions and their followers.

Cast aside whims and contentious debate, and every utterance that merely breeds opinions.

Among the binding articles of the sunnah is faith in everything conveyed by the Qur’an and by the musnad ḥadith transmitted, with continuous chains, from the imams to the Prophet; and that our Lord is pre-eternal, without beginning, and remains everlasting, without end.

He spoke to His servant Moses directly, and He has ever been the All-Wise Disposer of affairs. His speech—His very word—is eternal, and He is above His mighty Throne.

The correct position concerning His detailed Book is that it is His revealed speech, sent down to His truthful Messenger; it is neither created nor creating. Whoever claims it is created or originated has uttered deviance, and suspending judgment about it is a misguiding innovation—so too the formula, adopted by some, that “our utterance of it is created.”

Both factions are Jahmīs: those who withhold judgment and those who speak of created utterance.

Away with the doctrine of the paltry Jahm, of Wāṣil, of Bishr al-Marīsī—how trifling and ignorant!—and of the obstinate Muʿammar, Ibn Abī Dāʾūd, and Ibn ʿUbayd, the shaykh of the Muʿtazilah, the trailblazer of innovation and misguidance.