“He is a Shafiʿi in the subsidiary rulings, yet an anthropomorphist in creed—even though he disowns that in many places—and he shows a Khārijite streak, although he is far less wicked in all this than the poem’s author and his teacher!”

It is plain that Abu Ghuddah cannot pretend to draw a line between al-Dhahabi on the one side and Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim on the other, for he knows full well that all three follow the same Salafi creed; this is precisely why his own master al-Kawthari opposed them all, as the passage just quoted makes clear.

However much Abu Ghuddah tries to wriggle out of this, his writings expose him. Listen, dear reader, to the way he stabs at Ibn al-Qayyim and accuses him of anthropomorphism—exactly as his teacher al-Kawthari did, though with a measure of craftiness and equivocation: “Evil plotting recoils only upon those who plot” (Qur’an 35:43). In his marginalia on al-Ajwiba al-Fāḍila (p. 130) he writes:

“As for Ibn al-Qayyim, despite his lofty stature and keen mind, whenever he cites a hadith that suits his own ‘approach’, he goes to extravagant lengths to strengthen and buttress it, so that the reader is led to imagine it belongs to the mutawātir category, whereas it may actually be weak, singular, or outright rejected. Yet because it accords with his ‘approach’ he marshals every conceivable proof in its favor …”

What, then, is this “approach” of Ibn al-Qayyim according to Abu Ghuddah? It is the very anthropomorphism with which al-Kawthari had just branded him—both in that passage and elsewhere, most notably in his notes on al-Sayf al-Ṣaqīl, which he titled “A Supplement to the Refutation of Ibn al-Qayyim’s Nūniyyah.” There he counsels the readers (p. 57):

“I seek Allah’s protection for them from honoring a man who does not surpass him in …”