and their property—yet their trial was not one of rejecting the speech of the Lord of the Worlds, His names, His attributes, or the reality of His very Essence. Rather, it involved something short of that: a departure from the prescribed sunnah. Even though the authors of doctrinal compendia have reported (1) that the Khawarij’s view of tawhid is the same as that of the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah, this (2) is an even greater evil (3) for the Jahmiyyah themselves. It would seem—Allah knows best—that such a claim was voiced by some remnants of the Khawarij who were still alive when the doctrines of Jahm first appeared (4) in the early second century AH. Before (5) that time, no statement had arisen in Islam denying the divine attributes, asserting the creation of the Quran, or denying that Allah is upon His Throne (6) and the like. Therefore, it is unsound to attribute any of these views to any Muslim prior to the second century—whether Khawarij or anyone else—for at that time no one within Islam spoke with these Jahmi negations, and no report has been transmitted from the well-known Khawarij of that period, or from others, that contains any of these Jahmi doctrines.

Among the greatest causes of the innovations championed by the dialectical theologians—Jahmiyyah and others—is their inadequacy when debating the unbelievers and polytheists. They argue and contend with them without employing truth or justice, claiming thereby to uphold Islam, and so those opponents gain the upper hand (7) over them,