—Muḥammad, son of ʿAbd Allāh, son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, son of Hūd, son of Khālid, son of Tammām, son of ʿAdnān, son of Ṣafwān, son of Jābir, son of Yaḥyā, son of Ribāḥ, son of Yasār, son of al-ʿAbbās, son of Muḥammad, son of al-Ḥasan, the son of Imām ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
He left al-Sūs al-Aqṣā as a young man and travelled eastward; there he performed the pilgrimage, studied jurisprudence, and gathered various branches of learning. He enjoined right and forbade wrong, was strong-willed, boldly courageous, imposing, and unflinching in speaking the truth. He held administrative authority under the sovereign, was enamoured of leadership and public acclaim, yet carried an air of awe, dignity, majesty, upright dealings, and devotion. Many people benefited from him and, on the whole, were guided; they captured cities and subdued kings.
He studied under al-Kiyā al-Harrāsī, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, and Abū Bakr al-Ṭurṭūshī, and he spent a year in residence (near the Sacred Mosque).
He was passionately attached to kalām (speculative theology), venturing into its slippery grounds, and he composed a creed to which he gave the title
…from him; there is therefore no room to deny, suspect, or criticise them. Once their plan succeeds and they perceive from their followers total obedience and absolute submission, they exploit them for their base ambitions and ignoble aims, seize wealth and violate honour, and commit offences that are plainly invalid in the law of Allah. Yet we see these naïve people, whose minds have been numbed, approving every deed that proceeds from their leaders on the pretext that those leaders are infallible and that nothing issues from them except truth and goodness. What appears to outsiders as a transgression, they claim, is only due to the outsiders’ ignorance of those leaders and of the rank they occupy.
This—painful though it is to acknowledge—is common and well-known among many groups that lay claim to Islam.
Had these people learned and feared Allah concerning what they know, they would have realised with certainty that Allah has granted infallibility to none of His creatures except the messengers whom He chose to convey His revelation and clarify it. They alone are surrounded by divine protection in conveying and explaining; and whenever an error occurred in their exposition, revelation descended to correct it, as is clear in more than one verse of the Quran. All others, whatever their station, are human: they err and they are right. What they get right is to be accepted; in what they err they are to be excused—provided they are qualified for ijtihad—and they are not to be imitated in their mistakes.