and by denouncing the injustice said to have been done to ʿAli (1)—may Allah be pleased with him—after which they pursued a variety of schemes until, at last, they drove those whom they had enticed clear out of Islam… (2).

Next the Murjiʾah emerged as a reaction to the Khawarij and the Shiʿah. They postponed judgment on the perpetrator of a major sin until the Day of Resurrection, asserting: “No sin harms a person who has faith, just as no act of obedience benefits a person who is steeped in unbelief” (3).

After them came the Jahmiyyah, who negated the attributes of the Lord—exalted is He. The root of this doctrine, as the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—explains, “was taken from the disciples of the Jews, the pagans, and the misled Sabians. The first man known to have voiced it within Islam—namely, that Allah is not truly upon the Throne and that the meaning of istawā is istawlã (‘took possession’) and the like—was al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham. Al-Jahm ibn Ṣafwān adopted it from him, propagated it, and thus the teaching came to be called the Jahmiyyah.”

It is said that Jaʿd learned his creed from Abiyān ibn Samʿān; Abiyān received it from Ṭālūt, the nephew of Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam; and Ṭālūt had taken it from Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam, the Jewish sorcerer who cast a spell on the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him.

This Jaʿd ibn Dirham, it is reported, was a native of Harran, where many Sabians and philosophers resided… until the author concludes: “…thus Jaʿd most likely absorbed it from the Sabian philosophers” (4).

As for the Muʿtazilah, they affirmed the doctrine of qadar, which—as mentioned earlier—was introduced by a man of Magian descent. Their factions multiplied over it, each anathematizing the other. The leading Muʿtazili figures—such as Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, al-Naẓẓām, and others—were influenced by the philosophical works that had been translated into Arabic