any namesake?” (1)
“He neither begets nor is begotten” (3),
“and there is none comparable to Him.” (2)
Upon this creed stand the people of knowledge and faith—the followers of the messengers, from the earliest generations to the last.
The method of those opponents, however, is a detailed negation—“He is not this, nor that” (3)—coupled with a nebulous, undefined affirmation. They say, “He is absolute existence, describable only by privation, by relation, or by some amalgam of the two, and the like.” Anyone who knows what the messengers brought and what these people assert realizes that they have reached the utmost degree of defiance, opposition, and warfare against Allah and His Messenger (4).
These individuals have devoted themselves to crafting pseudo-rational objections (5) with which they seek to deny the truth. They have forced the Book of Allah into interpretations alien to it: they distorted the words from their proper places, deviated with regard to the Names and verses of Allah, and construed them in ways that are—by undeniable necessity—contrary to what Allah and His Messenger intended, just as their brethren, the Qarmaṭa, did before them (6).
(1) Surah Maryam, verse 65.
(2) Surah al-Ikhlāṣ, verses 3–4.
(3) The phrase “wa la kadhā” (“and so on”) is omitted in manuscripts s and t.
(4) In manuscripts s and t it reads “wa rusulihi” (“and His messengers”).
(5) The original reading is bishibh (“with similarity”), attested in manuscripts s and t, and likely the correct one.
(6) The Qarmatians were an offshoot of the batiniyya (esoteric movement), named after one of their missionaries, Ḥumaidān ibn Qarmat, originally from Khuzistan (Ahwāz). In their early period they displayed extreme asceticism and piety, which attracted followers known as Qarmatians. They denied the sharīʿa, outwardly professed Rafḍ (rejectionism), inwardly accepted kufr (disbelief), and held that all branches of knowledge depend solely on the teachings of the infallible imam (maʿṣūm), while reason must be barred from grasping truth on account of potential doubts. They maintained that in every age an infallible imam—who, by divine grant, knows all the secrets of the sharīʿa—must be consulted. Moreover, they advanced false and abhorrent doctrines concerning God, prophethood, resurrection, and legal obligations, thus revealing themselves as a misguided atheistic sect and a destructive esoteric movement. For details on their history, creed, and objectives, see al-Ghazālī, Fadāʼih al-Bāṭiniyya (The Scandals of the Batiniyya), p. 12 ff.; and Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Qarmāṭah (a lengthy chapter on the Qarmatians).