so-and-so is that he must believe such-and-such and must avoid such-and-such, making that belief obligatory for him and that action forbidden. If they will not release him from prison unless he agrees, they have treated it as lawful to punish and confine him until he yields. Yet if what they order has not been ordered by Allah and His Messenger, and what they forbid has not been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, then they stand in the very position of those Khārijites, Rāfiḍites, and Jahmites whose ways resemble those of the idolaters and apostates. It is well-known that what they are claiming is found nowhere in the words of Allah or His Messenger, nor have they shown that it is there. Had it truly existed in the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger, it would have been incumbent upon them to present the evidence, for punishments are permissible only after the proof has been established—

as Allah, Exalted is He, says:

“We would never punish until We had sent a messenger.” ⦗1⦘

Since they did not establish Allah’s proof—the proof for whose rejection a person may be punished—and in fact nothing they mention can be found in that proof, and since they have even forbidden the conveyance of Allah’s and His Messenger’s proof, this is among the gravest matters, strikingly similar to the condition of those Khārijites, the renegades who resemble the polytheists, apostates, and hypocrites.⦗2⦘

2. Moreover, may Allah have mercy on him, he regarded this ordeal as the most egregious of trials, for greater effort was exerted to spread it and to coerce the people into it than for any other innovation. He said, may Allah have mercy on him:

“The issue of the Qur’an set off, among both the early and later generations, a level of turmoil and dispute unmatched by anything concerning the matter of Allah’s exaltedness above and on high. In the era of the Salaf there was no one who would openly deny or reject that exaltedness, whereas in their own time there were those who openly declared that the Qur’an is created. Back then the Jahmites did not dare invite people to deny that Allah is above His Throne—indeed, they never made such a claim public—whereas they did dare summon people to the assertion that the Qur’an is created, to test them on it, and to punish whoever refused: by imprisonment, flogging, execution, cutting off their stipends, removing them from office, rejecting their testimony, declining to ransom them from enemy captivity, and other penalties suited only for one who has left Islam. Through this they altered the religion in a manner akin to the alteration of many apostates. But Allah then raised up a people whom He loves and who love Him—humble toward the believers, strong against the disbelievers, striving in…"