—chief among them the innovations of the Khawarij and the Rafidites.

At that stage the chief topic on which the Qadariyyah spoke was human actions, exactly as the Murjiʾah did. Their discussion therefore centered on obedience and sin, the believer and the sinner, and the like—issues of names and rulings, reward and punishment.

They had not yet begun to debate their Lord Himself or His attributes. That only started in the later part of the era of the younger Successors, toward the close of the Umayyad rule, when the third generation—the Followers of the Successors—were themselves mostly passing away; for when the first three generations are assessed, consideration is given to the majority of each generation, that is, the people in its middle years.

The bulk of the Companions died out with the end of the caliphate of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs—so much so that only a few of the veterans of Badr were still alive. The great majority of the Successors who followed them with excellence passed away toward the end of the era of the younger Companions, during the rule of ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Zubayr and ʿAbd al-Malik. Most of the Followers of the Followers disappeared in the closing years of the Umayyad dynasty and the opening years of the ʿAbbāsid state.

By then many non-Arabs had entered positions of authority, much governance slipped from Arab hands, and a number of foreign works—Persian, Indian, and Byzantine—were translated into Arabic. Thus materialized the Prophet’s words, peace and blessings be upon him: “Then falsehood will become widespread until a man testifies without being asked and swears an oath without being required to swear.”

Three new currents emerged: speculative opinion, theological dialectic, and Sufism. Alongside them appeared Jahmism—the denial of the divine attributes—and, in reaction, anthropomorphic assimilation.

Ibn Taymiyyah goes on to say: “Indeed, to know the roots and beginnings of things, to understand the religion and its foundation and the origin of whatever has developed within it, is among the most beneficial branches of knowledge; for unless a person comprehends the realities…"