—for having said, “He compelled the servants.”

I then asked Abū ʿAbdullāh, “So what is the proper reply in this issue?” He answered, “Allah leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills.”

Al-Marwazī, commenting on the case, said that he heard Abū ʿAbdullāh censure the man who asserted, “He did not compel,” as well as the one who retorted, “He compelled.” Abū ʿAbdullāh remarked, “Whenever someone introduces an innovation, the people broaden their responses to it.” He added, “The one who answered them with that newly-coined phrase should ask his Lord’s forgiveness,” and he reproved anyone who counters innovators with the same sort of speculative discourse when he has no recognised Imām to precede him in that field.

Al-Marwazī continued: Before long Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī arrived from ʿUkbarā with a group of elders and a letter from the people of ʿUkbarā. I ushered Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī into Abū ʿAbdullāh’s presence. He said, “O Abū ʿAbdullāh, here is the book; hand it over to Abū Bakr so that he may tear it up, and I shall ascend the pulpit of ʿUkbarā and seek Allah’s forgiveness.” Abū ʿAbdullāh then said to me, “You ought to accept that from him,” and so they returned to him.

We have discussed this matter in detail elsewhere, exposing the faulty premise held by various factions: that affirming the true meaning which they label jabr (compulsion) conflicts with divine command and prohibition. The Qadarīs claimed that it nullifies every command and prohibition outright. Some among the Jabariyyah considered it incompatible with the inherent goodness or badness of actions, and on that basis denied the rationally evident moral qualities residing in an act itself. Yet it is plain that such an affirmation is no more at odds with those qualities than it would be with describing a deed as harmonious and beneficial to its doer, or as discordant and detrimental to him.