[The Thirty-Eighth Argument]

He said:

If the Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—did not explain to people the foundations of their faith, nor impart to them knowledge by which they could find guidance concerning the greatest matters of religion, the loftiest aims of the prophetic call, the noblest purpose for which creation was brought into being, and the finest knowledge that created beings have grasped, acquired, and attained, but instead explained only practical matters—if that were so, then it is well known that whoever taught them and explained to them the nobler of these two branches and the greater of these two categories would have brought them something better than what was brought by someone who explained only the inferior branch and the less worthy category.

In that case, not one of the leading authorities of the doctrine of those who deny the divine attributes belongs to the best of this community or its foremost predecessors. Rather, their principal authorities are the Qarmatian esotericists among the Ismā‘īlīs, the Nusayrīs, and others like them, together with those who agree with them among the heretical philosophers and heretical Sufis who profess unity of existence, divine indwelling, and union of Creator and creation—such as Ibn Sīnā, al-Fārābī, Ibn ‘Arabī, Ibn Sab‘īn, and others like them.

Then there are those who are comparatively better than these, such as the leading authorities of the Jahmiyyah: Jahm ibn Safwān, al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham, Abū al-Hudhayl al-‘Allāf, and Abū Ishāq al-Nazzām,