It is astonishing that the Jahmīs, including the Mu‘tazilīs and others, attribute the Christians’ position to those who affirm the divine attributes, as Ahmad and other scholars have reported of them.

For this reason, they fabricated a story about Ibn Kullāb that gained credence among some who associated themselves with the Sunnah, and these people cited it among his faults. The story was that he had a Christian sister who shunned him when he embraced Islam, and that he told her, “I professed Islam in order to corrupt the Muslims’ religion.” She was therefore pleased with him.

This story was nothing but a fabrication by some Jahmīs among the Mu‘tazilīs and others like them, because Ibn Kullāb opposed them by affirming the divine attributes. They accuse those who affirm the attributes of resembling the Christians. Yet their own position more closely resembles that of the Christians, for they must either say that He is everywhere—which is more extreme than the Christians’ claim—or say something worse still: that He is neither inside the world nor outside it.

For this reason, a number of scholars, such as ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Makkī and others, would refute them with arguments of this kind, saying: “If the Muslims have judged as unbelievers those who say, ‘He