First: The accusations leveled against Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah

1. On page 187 Abū Zahrah asserts that Ibn Taymiyyah “added other elements to the doctrine of the salaf that have prompted me to reflect upon them.”

I say: this is pure slander against Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah. To claim that he introduced matters of his own devising and grafted them onto the creed of the early generations is a grave allegation from which Allah has absolved him. He neither added nor invented anything; rather, he called people to the doctrine of the salaf, clarified it, and championed it with honesty and devotion. The content of his books and letters matches—down to the last detail—what the earlier imams recorded in their works. He merely cites their words and traces them to their well-known sources, without addition or omission. Abū Zahrah has not produced a single example to support his charge.

2. On page 193 he writes: “Accordingly, Ibn Taymiyyah holds that the doctrine of the salaf is to affirm everything mentioned in the Noble Qur’an—such as exaltedness and lowness, settling upon the Throne, face, hand, love and hatred—and everything of the same sort found in the Sunnah, without figurative interpretation and according to the bare, literal sense. Is this truly the doctrine of the salaf?” These are Abū Zahrah’s words.

The Hanbalis of the fourth century AH, as we have already explained, had advanced this claim before him and maintained that it represented the doctrine of the salaf. Scholars of that time debated them and proved that it inevitably leads to tashbīh (anthropomorphism) and tajsīm (corporealism). How could it do otherwise when they allow sensory, physical pointing toward Him? For that reason the eminent Hanbali jurist and preacher Ibn al-Jawzī rose to oppose them, denying that such a view belonged to the salaf and also denying that it was the position of Imām—