—indeed, exceedingly so.(1) His own words in more than one place testify to this. Hence, in the bulk of his writings—both on the foundational principles(2) and on subsidiary issues—you will find that whenever he bases a point on something he deems definitive, it is either on what he claims to be a rational analogy or on a transmitted consensus, and even much of that is open to objection. As for the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the statements of the early generations of the ummah and their leading imams, he seldom relies on them,(3) nor is he well acquainted with them.(4) Judge this by what he records in his rebuttal of al-Ājurri(5) and others among the scholars who authored works on the chapters of the Sunnah and on refuting the people of vain desires: they refuted(6) them with the Sunnah and the inherited reports, mentioning therein the hadiths concerning the divine attributes. He says:(7)

“Know that the people of truth repudiated the Muʿtazilah, opposed them, and followed the transmitted revelation and the Sacred Law. They affirmed the Beatific Vision and beholding, affirmed the Bridge and the Balance, the torment of the grave and the questioning by Munkar and Nakir, the Ascension and the Basin. Their condemnation was severe of anyone associated with denying the narrated reports and the widely transmitted traditions(8) on these foundations and beliefs. They agreed that the concepts of good and evil, in the rulings of obligation, prohibition, and risk, cannot be grasped by reason alone; in all of them the final reference must be to the sources of the Sacred Law.”(9)