It is therefore clear that denying the pre-eternity (qidam) of the Qur’an is not his personal opinion, as the slanderers maintain; rather, it is the position unanimously held by the early generations of this community. It also shows that there is a difference between the genus of speech and its individual utterances. Allah knows best.
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They allege that he affirms the world’s pre-eternity. This is a blatant lie against Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, for he never professed that view. Here are his own words refuting it. He states in Majmuʿ al-Fatāwā (9/281): “The messengers are unanimously agreed that everything besides Allah is originated and created, brought into being after previously not existing; nothing shares Allah’s eternal pre-existence. He created the heavens, the earth, and all that lies between them in six days, and reason recognises that every contingent event must have a cause.” In the second volume of this blessed collection, page 188, he explicitly pronounces takfīr (declares a person a disbeliever) upon anyone who claims the universe is eternal.
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They claim that he says the prophets are not infallible. This too is a manifest lie and obvious calumny, for Shaykh al-Islam expressly upholds the prophets’ infallibility. His exact words on the matter are: “The prophets—may Allah’s blessings be upon them—are infallible (maʿṣūm) in what they report from Allah, exalted is He, and in conveying His messages, by consensus of the Ummah; hence it is obligatory to believe in everything they have brought.” He then continues: “As for infallibility in matters unrelated to conveying the message, scholars differ: is it established by reason or by revelation? They also disagree over whether infallibility covers major sins and minor sins or only some of them; whether it means immunity from persisting in sin rather than from ever committing it; whether one need affirm infallibility only in matters of transmission; and whether infallibility from disbelief and sins before their commissioning as prophets is required or not.”