—namely, [his voluntary actions]—nor is he incapacitated with respect to what he abandons, so that he comes to dislike, detest, and have no will for it—[his voluntary omissions].

As for al-Awzāʿī, he objected to using this term at all—even were one to intend the meaning just explained—because it has no basis in the Qur’an or the Sunnah. Employing an innovated expression whose outward sense points to falsehood is therefore impermissible, even if someone claims to mean by it something sound.

Al-Khallāl said: al-Marwazī informed us: I heard one of the elders say: I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī say, “Sufyān al-Thawrī rejected jabr and said, ‘Allah has fashioned (jabala) the servants.’” Al-Marwazī added, “I think he was alluding to the Prophet’s ﷺ words to al-Ashajj of ʿAbd al-Qays, in the report found in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: ‘You possess two traits that Allah loves: forbearance and deliberation.’ He asked, ‘Are these two traits that I have acquired, or two traits with which I was created (jubilta ʿalay-himā)?’ The Prophet replied, ‘Rather, they are two traits with which you were created.’ He then said, ‘Praise be to Allah who has created in me two traits that Allah loves.’”

For this reason al-Bukhārī and others adduced, as evidence that actions are created, the verse: “Indeed, man was created anxious: when evil touches him, he is fretful; and when good touches him, he is tight-fisted” (Q 70:19–21). Thus Allah informs us that He created man upon this disposition.

Al-Awzāʿī’s answer is stronger than that of al-Zubaydī, because al-Zubaydī negated jabr altogether, whereas al-Awzāʿī forbade uttering the word. The term can in fact bear a correct meaning, and negating it unqualifiedly might imply denying both truth and falsehood alike. Al-Khallāl therefore cited what ʿAbdullāh b. Aḥmad recorded in his Kitāb al-Sunnah, saying: “Muḥammad b. Bakkār narrated to us; Abū Maʿshar narrated …”