Such reports belong to the body of transmitted ḥadīth whose outward wording, if taken literally, affirms things that sound reason declares impossible.

[Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī] then said: “Since infallibility is not definitively established for a walī, there is no justification for attributing to him statements that may not lawfully be uttered unless their transmission is proven and necessity requires their narration—after which they must be interpreted.

He went on to say: “Consider this: were an author to recount the doctrine of certain Ḥashwiyya who claim that sound, letters, and even the paper itself are eternal, it would not befit him to preface it with, ‘Some of the verifiers maintain that when the reciter reads the Book of Allah the reciter himself becomes eternal after having been created’; nor would it be proper, when reporting the creed of the Karrāmiyya, to say, ‘Some astute scholars assert that Allah is a locus for temporal events.’”

The Chief Judge of the community, Abū ʿAbd Allah Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdin al-Qurṭubī, said: “A certain preacher—who once laid claim to the discipline of jurisprudence but then disowned it out of infatuation with the Ghazālian programme and the Ṣūfī path—composed a pamphlet that amounts to a partisan defence of the book of Abū Ḥāmid, the leader of their innovation. How distant he is from the hideous monstrosities of its objectionable doctrines and the misleading fables of its myths that run contrary to the religion! He alleges that this material belongs to the ‘science of transactions’ which leads to the ‘science of unveiling’, by which they imagine themselves privy to the secret of Lordship (sirr al-rubūbiyya)—a secret that will never lift its veil, and to whose disclosure none attains save one who plunges into the billows of their misguidance, the very misguidance for which they have hoisted banners and fashioned rulings.”

Abū Ḥāmid said: “The slightest share one may have of this knowledge is simply to believe in it, and the lightest punishment for denying it is that the denier is deprived of any part thereof. So set his words against his words. Let him not busy himself with reciting Qur’an or writing down ḥadīth, for that would cut him off from reaching the point where he can thrust his head into the sleeve of his cloak, wrap himself in his mantle, and thereby hear the call of the Truth. Thus he proclaims: ‘Leave aside what the early generations were upon and hasten to what I command you!’”

After this the judge became exceedingly coarse, reviled, pronounced takfīr, and went to extremes. We seek refuge in Allah from whim and caprice.