with books (1) entitled “Takfīr al-Jahmiyya” (The Excommunication of the Jahmites), with the essays of the scholars of Islam about them, the steady campaign of the caliphs against them, the hammer-blows of the Sunni rank and file upon them, and the unanimous agreement of the Muslims to drive them out of the faith. Isolation weighed heavily on them, humiliation dragged on, and every stratagem failed—save that they should display dissent toward their own predecessors, refute them, and recast their words in an array (2) clearer to the intellect and more persuasive to the common folk than the foundations laid by the first generation, so that their discourse might find a passage and they might slip free of the shame of infamy. Thus they produced dazzling impostures that appear to others (3) in a guise quite unlike what they conceal within. When an insightful observer examines them warily, he sees the marrow of philosophy sheathed in the bark of the Sunnah, and the Jahmite knot undone beneath the labels of “wisdom.”

They refute the Jews for their saying,

“ The hand of Allah is shackled ” (4),

yet they deny the shackle and they deny the hand—so they (5) are in a worse state than the Jews. Allah affirmed the attribute and negated the defect; the Jews affirmed the attribute and affirmed the defect; these people negate the attribute as they negate the defect. They likewise contest the Christians for their doctrine (6) concerning Jesus and his mother, declaring, “Nothing uncreated can be found within what is created” (7); thereby they invalidate the Quran. It is plain to people of discernment that the words of their first generation (8) and the words of their last (9) are no more than a magician’s thread (10).