Section: On comparing and ranking the various schools of innovation

• The dialecticians among the scholastic theologians who claim to have reached certitude and who affiliate themselves with the Sunnah hold that monotheism is nothing more than affirming Allah’s Lordship.

• Certain groups of the Sufis who likewise profess verification and gnosis say that the highest station of tawḥīd is to witness Allah’s Lordship. Yet it is common knowledge that this is precisely what the idolaters already acknowledged; it does not by itself make a person a Muslim, much less raise him to the rank of a friend of Allah—let alone to the highest ranks of His friends.

• Another faction affirms this same form of tawḥīd while denying the divine attributes, thereby lapsing into deficiency and outright negation; their condition is worse than that of many idolaters.

• Jahm ibn Ṣafwān, the leader of the Jahmiyyah who deny the attributes, takes an extreme view of divine decree and destiny and espouses absolute predeterminism (jabr). In this he sides with the idolaters who declared, “If Allah had willed, neither we nor our fathers would have committed idolatry, nor would we have forbidden anything.” Nevertheless, he does affirm that there are divine commands and prohibitions, and in this respect he departs from the idolaters. However, because he embraces the doctrine of irjāʾ, he greatly weakens the force of command, prohibition, and punishment, for in his view the perpetrator of a major sin remains a believer in full possession of faith and is not liable for punishment.

• The Najjāriyyah—followers of al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Najjār—and the Ḍarāriyyah—followers of Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr and Ḥafṣ al-Fard—come close to Jahm in their positions on predestination and faith, along with