ʿAṭāʾ, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “For every innovation that schemes against Islam, Allah appoints a guardian who defends His religion …” – and so forth, the rest of the report.
This narration is fabricated; Ibn Jurayj never transmitted anything of the sort.
Humanity remained one community and their religion stood firm throughout the caliphates of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. When the lock on the door of trial – ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) – was martyred and the door was broken open, the leaders of evil rose up against the martyr ʿUthmān until he was slaughtered in cold blood. The unity of the word was shattered; the Battle of the Camel took place, followed by the Battle of Ṣiffīn.
The Khārijites then appeared and pronounced the foremost Companions to be unbelievers. After them emerged the Rāfiḍites and the Nāṣibites. Near the end of the Companions’ era the Qadariyya arose, then the Muʿtazila in Baṣra, and the Jahmiyya and the Mujassima in Khurāsān during the age of the Tābiʿīn, even while the Sunnah and its people remained manifest until after the year 200 AH.
Then came the caliph al-Maʾmūn. He was intelligent, skilled in dialectics, and fond of rational speculation. He procured the writings of the ancients, had the wisdom of the Greeks rendered into Arabic, and immersed himself in that night and day—scheming and contriving—so that the Jahmiyya and the Muʿtazila, and even the Shīʿa, raised their heads, for he himself inclined that way.
Matters reached the point that he compelled the ummah to profess that the Qurʾān is created and put the scholars to an inquisition, granting them no respite. Yet before the year was out he perished, leaving behind calamity and trial in the religion. The Muslim community had always held that the Magnificent Qurʾān is the Speech of Allah Most High—His revelation and His descent—knowing nothing else, until the claim was foisted upon them that it is created, produced speech, and that its attribution to Allah is merely an honorific one, like “the House of Allah” or “the she-camel of Allah.”
The scholars repudiated this.
The Jahmiyya had never dared show themselves during the reigns of al-Mahdī, al-Rashīd, and al-Amīn; but when al-Maʾmūn assumed power he was one of them and publicly propagated their doctrine.
Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dawraqī related from Muḥammad ibn Nūḥ that al-Rashīd once said: “News has reached me that Bishr ibn Ghiyāth al-Marīsī claims that the Qurʾān is created; by Allah, …”