to His will and power, according to the two well-known positions regarding speech and actions (1).
Some of those just named—such as Abū ʿAlī and Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Zāghūnī—imagined that the entire ummah had agreed that no contingent events can subsist in Him. They adopted that as their foundational principle, yet that is the full extent of their knowledge (2). This so-called consensus resembles other alleged consensuses (3) that abound in kalām and elsewhere (4); and how numerous they are! Whoever reflects (5) will find that most unsound doctrines are built upon premises that can be established only by an alleged consensus or by analogy, both of which, when scrutinized, prove baseless.
What is even more astonishing is that some theologians from among the people of ḥadīth, followers of Aḥmad and others (6), claim this same consensus, despite the many reports from their own colleagues that state the opposite, indeed from their very Imām and other leading scholars (7). There is even a well-known dispute among them over the very terms “movement” and “relocation.” These notions have been affirmed by various ṭawāʾif (groups) (8) such as Ibn Ḥāmid (9) and others, and he has recorded the consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah on—
(1) The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—will mention them on p. 499. See also Ibn Taymiyya, Daf‘ Ta‘arrud al-‘Aql wa al-Naql (The Refutation of the Contradiction between Reason and Revelation), vol. 2, pp. 18–20, 256, 257.
(2) The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—relates the account of Ibn al-Zaghuni, the qadi, and others regarding the consensus on the impossibility of accidents occurring in Him in order to avert the conflict between reason and transmission (Daf‘ Ta‘arrud al-‘Aql wa al-Naql, vol. 8, p. 98). He then says: “This is among the group of consensuses that those who proclaim them declare according to what they suppose; since these statements are general, one may derive from them what is false as consensus, and those who generalize them include many meanings understood only by the select few.”
(3) In the original: al-ijmā‘ (consensus). Confirmed in S and T.
(4) In S and T: “wa nahwuh” (and similar).
(5) In S and T: “tadabburuha” (reflect on it).
(6) “Ghayruhum” (others): repeated in S.
(7) In the original: “wa ghayruhum” (and others). Confirmed in S and T.
(8) The text within the brackets is an addition by S and T.
(9) He is al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥāmid ibn ‘Alī ibn Marwān al-Baghdādī al-Warrāq, Abū ‘Abd Allāh, Shaykh =