He also said:

“The people of the Sunnah unanimously agree on affirming all the attributes mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah, believing in them, and understanding them in their real, not figurative, sense. However, they do not specify how any of these attributes are, nor do they find any of them to be circumscribed.

“As for the people of innovation—the Jahmiyyah, all the Muʿtazilah, and the Khawārij—they all deny these attributes and understand none of them in their real sense. They claim that whoever affirms them likens Allah to His creation. Yet those who affirm them regard these people as deniers of the One worshipped, bilāshūn. The truth lies in the statements of those who affirm what Allah’s Book and His Messenger’s Sunnah declare; they are the leaders of the community.”

[Maʿmar ibn Ahmad al-Asbahānī’s words in his testament]

The shaykh and spiritual adept Maʿmar ibn Ahmad al-Asbahānī, one of the Sufi shaykhs of the late fourth century, said:

“I wished to leave my companions a testament drawn from the Sunnah and an admonition drawn from wisdom, and to bring together the teachings followed by the people of hadith and transmitted reports, and the people of spiritual knowledge and Sufism, both earlier and later.”

He said