Their five fundamentals—so they themselves name them—are: tawḥīd (divine oneness), ʿadl (justice), al-manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn (the station between two stations), infādh al-waʿīd (the irrevocability of the threat), and al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿan al-munkar (commanding right and forbidding wrong).

Yet the “tawḥīd” they champion entails denying the divine attributes. For this very reason Ibn Tūmart dubbed his followers “al-Muwaḥḥidūn,” even though such a view is nothing but deviation with respect to Allah’s names and His revelations.

Their notion of “justice” includes rejecting predestination—that Allah creates the actions of His servants, wills all that exists, and is capable of everything. Some of them even deny the pre-eternity of divine knowledge and of the Preserved Tablet. This is the doctrine espoused by their leading figures, and it is precisely the stance adopted by al-Zamakhsharī; his creed follows that of al-Mughīra ibn ʿAlī, Abū Hāshim, and their adherents. The school of Abū al-Ḥusayn—and the Muʿtazilīs who tread his path—splits into two strands: the Mashayikha and the Khashabiyya.

As for “the station between two stations,” they maintain that the flagrant sinner is in no sense to be called a believer, yet he is not labelled an unbeliever either; rather, he occupies an intermediate status.

“The irrevocability of the threat” means, in their doctrine, that the grave sinners of the Muslim community will dwell eternally in Hell, never to emerge—whether through intercession or by any other means—exactly as the Khārijites claim.

Finally, “commanding right and forbidding wrong” in their usage entails the permissibility of rising up against the rulers and fighting them with the sword.

Al-Zamakhsharī has stuffed his commentary with these principles, couched in language that most readers neither detect nor understand, in addition to the forged hadiths it contains and its meagre citation of the statements of the Companions and the Successors.

Al-Qurṭubī’s Tafsīr is vastly superior to it—far closer to the method of the people of the Qur’an and Sunnah and far more distant from innovation. True, every one of these works inevitably contains matters open to critique, yet justice demands that we weigh them fairly and grant each its rightful due.