• The Muʿtazilah are preferable to the Jahmiyyah in those areas where they disagreed with them over predestination and over matters of “names and rulings” (al-asmāʾ wa’l-aḥkām). To affirm divine command and prohibition, together with the promise and the threat, while denying predestination is still better than affirming predestination while denying the command and prohibition and the promise and threat. Hence, in the time of the Companions and their Followers no one denied the divine command and prohibition or the promise and threat, although the Qadariyyah and the Harūrī Khārijites did exist in that period. Innovations appear first in their lighter form; whenever those who bear the light of Prophethood grow weak, innovation waxes strong, and the closer a person is to the early generations and to the leading imams, the loftier and sounder his words will be.
• As for the Sufis who behold the cosmic reality yet turn away from command and prohibition, they are worse than the Qadari Muʿtazilah and the like, for such Sufis resemble the polytheists who said, “Had Allah willed, we would not have associated anything with Him” (al-Anʿām 6:148). The Qadariyyah, by contrast, are akin to the Magians who claimed that the universe has two creators, and the polytheists are worse than the Magians.
• The Sufis who retain some reverence for command and prohibition while perceiving the unity of Lordship and acknowledging predestination are better than the Muʿtazilah, yet from another angle they themselves are Muʿtazilah. They have made the summit of monotheism the mere witnessing of the unity of Lordship and annihilation (fanāʾ) therein, thereby withdrawing from the Muslim community and its Sunnah. The innovation into which they have fallen may, in certain respects, be graver than that of those Muʿtazilah.
Each of these groups possesses misguidance and innovation in proportion to the extent of its departure from the Muslim community and its Sunnah.
• The religion of Allah is that with which He sent His messengers and revealed in His scriptures; it is the straight path—the path of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and of his Companions, the best community among all nations.
– And Allah has commanded us in our prayer to say, “Guide us to the straight path…"