authority, and they go on to discuss such subjects ⦗1⦘ in ways that violate both the revealed law and sound reason. So how can they censure someone who compiles and records what the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—his Companions, and those who followed them with excellence actually said? The doctrinal foundations he upholds are the very principles of Jahm ibn Ṣafwān concerning the divine attributes, predestination, and irjāʾ (deferral in matters of faith). This has become manifest among his followers, such as the so-called Moroccan claimant in his work Murshida ⦗2⦘ and others. In the question of predestination they espouse Jahm’s view, inclining toward outright jabr (compulsion); in irjāʾ they likewise adopt Jahm’s position, for to them faith is merely knowledge ⦗3⦘. With regard to the attributes, they diverge from Jahm and the Muʿtazila by affirming the attributes in a general way. Yet the real implication of Jahm’s and the Muʿtazila’s doctrine is the negation of both the Divine Essence and the attributes—though they neither intended nor believed that—whereas the real implication of these people’s doctrine is the affirmation of attributes without an Essence, even though they too did not intend or believe it. Hence they are internally self-contradictory; yet they
(1) Originally: fīhi. The reading with the particle min is attested in manuscripts S and T and may better fit the context.
(2) He is Abu ’Abdallāh Muḥammad ibn ’Abdallāh ibn Tumart al-Masmūdī al-Barbarī, who assumed the title al-Mahdī and named his followers al-Muwaḥḥidūn (the Almohads). He led the dawah of Sultan ’Abd al-Mu’min ibn ’Alī, King of al-Maghrib, and founded the Almohad state on the ruins of the Almoravid dynasty. He died in 524 AH.
See: Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-A’yān, vol. 5, pp. 45–55; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-al-Wafayāt, vol. 3, pp. 323–328; al-Ziriklī, al-A‘lām, vol. 7, pp. 104–105. “Al-Murshidah” is a short treatise printed repeatedly in various collections; al-Subkī cites it in Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfi‘iyyah, vol. 8, pp. 185–186.
Shaykh al-Islām (may God have mercy on him) states in Sharḥ al-Aṣbahānī, p. 20: “Since Abu ’Abdallāh ibn Tumart adhered to the Mu‘tazilite doctrine of negating the divine attributes, he labeled his followers al-Muwaḥḥidūn and, in his major work on attribute negation, explicitly denied all positive attributes. Consequently, in al-Murshidah he does not affirm any attributes—knowledge (ʿilm), omnipotence (qudra), speech (kalām), or others—but solely lists their denial.”
(3) For Jahm and his followers, faith (īmān) consists exclusively in the heart’s knowledge of God; thus, in their view, one who retains that inner knowledge yet denies it verbally is not deemed an apostate—a clearly untenable position, as discussed above.