they would apply toward them a policy of boycott and of withholding those public avenues through which their innovation could show itself (1)—such as refusing to speak with them or sit in their company—for this is the path to extinguishing their bidʿah. And when they were unable to prevail over them, they never feigned loyalty; rather, they remained patient upon the truth with which Allah sent His Prophet, just as the earliest generations of the believers used to do, and as Allah has commanded in His Book, where He enjoined them to persevere upon the truth and forbade that their hatred for a people should lead them to abandon justice (2).
The thirty-second point (3): this self-subsisting entity that they claim is “speech,” in the affirmation of which they have differed from every other faction of Islam—as they themselves acknowledge, as has been mentioned
= al-Kāmil by Ibn al-Athīr, vol. 3, pp. 334–348.
(1) In the printed edition: “bisabha.”
(2) In his al-Shariʿah (pp. 234–235), Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ajuri—after dedicating a chapter to the life of Umar ibn Abd al-ʿAziz in relation to the Qadariyya—concludes:
“This is our proof against the Qadariyya: the Book of Allah, exalted is He; the sunnah of His Messenger; the practice of his Companions and the righteous Followers; the consensus of the imams of Islam; and our renunciation of disputation and polemic on qadar (divine decree). We have been commanded to forsake the gatherings of the Qadariyya, to refuse to engage them in debate, and to shun, humiliate, and degrade them. None of them may lead the prayer behind a Muslim; their testimony is not accepted; marriages are not contracted with them; if they fall ill they are not visited; if they die their funeral is not attended, nor is their invitation to a feast accepted. If one of them comes seeking guidance, he is given sincere counsel and, if he repents, praise be to Allah; but if he returns to disputation, he is to be ignored, expelled, warned against, left unspoken to, and not greeted.”
(3) Previously, the Shaykh (may Allah have mercy on him) refuted the Ashʿarite claim that kalām (speech) is an immaterial meaning inherent in the soul, showing that in doing so they broke with the consensus of the ummah. From this vantage he begins his examination of their doctrine—that meaning is a single, self-existent entity—after citing the views of their imams such as al-Rāzī and Ibn Fūrak, and concludes that the doctrine is demonstrably false by reason, built on a corrupt premise, and riddled with self-contradiction.