is not above the universe, and that nothing of knowledge or power inheres in Him, nor life, hearing, sight, speech, will, or any attribute whatsoever.

As for their so-called “justice,” what it really entails is the claim that God did not will everything that exists, did not create all created things, and is not capable of them all. In their view, human actions—good or evil—are not created by God; He wills only what He has legislatively commanded, and whatever lies beyond that occurs outside His will. Later Shiʿite scholars, such as al-Mufīd, Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī, and others like them, have adopted this position. Abū Jaʿfar even produced a Qurʾanic commentary along those lines, to which he added the creed of the Twelver Imāmīs—something no Muʿtazilite has ever professed, nor has any of them denied the caliphates of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī.

Among the doctrines the Muʿtazilites share with the Khārijites is the strict execution of God’s threat in the Hereafter: they maintain that He will accept no intercession for those guilty of major sins and that none of them will ever be released from the Fire. Undoubtedly, various factions—the Murjiʾites, Karramites, Kullabites, and their followers—have rebutted them, sometimes effectively and sometimes poorly, until the two sides came to stand at opposite extremes, as has been explained elsewhere.

The upshot is that such people first adopt a doctrine and then impose it upon the wording of the Qurʾan. They have no precedent among the Companions, the righteous Followers, or the leading scholars of the Muslims—neither for their doctrine nor for their interpretation. Not one of their spurious commentaries fails to reveal its falsity from many angles: sometimes by recognizing the unsoundness of the doctrine itself, and at other times by seeing the invalidity of the interpretations they impose on the Qurʾan, whether offered as proof for their position or as rebuttal of their opponents.