During my journey I came across one innovation: the doctrine of al-bāṭin (the hidden interpretation). Yet when I returned I found that the doctrine of al-ẓāhir (the starkly literal) had flooded the entire West, spread by an ignoramus from the Bedouin outskirts of Seville known as Ibn Ḥazm. He was reared on the Shāfiʿī school, then enrolled himself under Dāwūd, after which he cast everything aside, stood on his own, and claimed that he was the Imam of the ummah—raising and lowering, legislating and judging as he pleased. He attributes to the religion of Allah what it does not contain, and he puts into the mouths of the scholars words they never uttered in order to turn people’s hearts away from them. He veered onto the path of the mushabbiha (anthropomorphists) with regard to Allah’s Essence and Attributes, and in that area he produced enormities.
It so happened that he arose among a people (1) whose only aptitude lay in debating legal minutiae; whenever he pressed them for proof they cowered (2), and he and his clique would laugh at them. High office lent him support, for he possessed a measure of literary polish and would present to the kings the specious arguments he had fashioned; they therefore carried him and shielded him because of the doubts about innovation and shirk that he sowed among them.
When I returned from my travels I found my own circle overflowing with such people, the flames of their misguidance scorching. I wrestled with them, though they were not my equals, without helpers, while the envious trampled my heels—at one moment my spirit all but failed before them, at another my molar would grind for them (3)—torn between ignoring them altogether and provoking them to debate.
A man then brought me a small volume by Ibn Ḥazm entitled “Nukat al-Islam” (Subtleties of Islam); it contained calamities, so I unsheathed my censures against it. Another brought me a treatise on creed, and I demolished it with my own work, “al-Ghurrat” (4)—though the affair is uglier than any mere refutation could remedy.
They say, “No statement counts except what Allah has said, and we follow none but the Messenger of Allah; Allah never commanded us to imitate anyone, nor to seek guidance from the way of any human being.” They must therefore understand that they possess no proof whatsoever; theirs is nothing but absurdity draped in grandiose language. I commend to you two counsels: do not marshal arguments on their behalf, and insist that they produce the proof; for when an innovator is confronted with evidence he becomes unruly