Why, then, did he not say, “Whoever holds to the outward sense of the Quran in matters of creed is astray, and true guidance is to be found only in your resort to the standards of your own intellects and to the innovations that your dialectical theologians will introduce after the first three generations—although their seed had already appeared toward the end of the Tābiʿīn era”?

[The Origin of the Doctrine of Taʿṭīl]
The root of this doctrine—the doctrine that nullifies the divine attributes—was in fact taken from the disciples of the Jews and the polytheists and from the misguided among the Sabians. The first person recorded as having propagated this doctrine within Islam was al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham,