he already knows will be spared what he does not know.
Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah also said, “Whoever thinks himself better than another has lapsed into arrogance,” and then he cited the example of Iblīs.
Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Ḥawārī recounted: “I asked Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, ‘What is zuhd (asceticism) in this world?’ He answered, ‘When one is blessed, he gives thanks; when tried by hardship, he remains patient. That is asceticism.’”
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said, “Whenever Sufyān was asked about something he would reply, ‘I am not competent.’ We would say, ‘Then whom should we ask?’ He would say, ‘Ask the scholars, and ask Allah for success.’”
Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿīd al-Jawharī reported: “I heard Ibn ʿUyaynah say, ‘Īmān (faith) is statement and deed; it increases and decreases.’”
Al-Ṭabarānī narrated: Bishr ibn Mūsā told us; al-Ḥumaydī told us: It was said to Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, “Bishr al-Marīsī claims that Allah will not be seen on the Day of Resurrection.” He replied, “May Allah fight that crawling creature! Have you not heard His words, ‘No! Indeed, that Day they will be veiled from their Lord’ (Q 83:15)? If He were to veil Himself from both His friends and His enemies, what distinction would the friends then have over the enemies?”
Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj relates in his History: “ʿAbbās ibn Abī Ṭālib narrated to us; Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAffān narrated to us: I heard Ibn ʿUyaynah in the year Bishr al-Marīsī was apprehended at Minā. Sufyān stood up in the gathering, anger clear upon him, and said, ‘They have begun to talk about qadar (predestination) and iʿtizāl (the Muʿtazilite doctrine), and we have been ordered to avoid such people. We saw our own scholars—this is ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, this is Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir,” and he went on to mention Ayyūb ibn Mūsā, al-Aʿmash, and Misʿar—“none of them knew it to be anything but the Speech of Allah, and we, too, know it to be nothing but the Speech of Allah. Whoever says otherwise, upon him is the curse of Allah twice over. How much this resembles the talk of the Christians! Do not sit with them.’”