It was in this manner that Imam Ahmad debated the Jahmiyyah when they summoned him for the inquisition. He kept demanding evidence from the Book and the Sunnah for their position. They presented their proofs, such as the words of Allah Most High:

“Creator of all things” [al-Anʿām: 102],

and His words:

“No new reminder comes to them from their Lord” [al-Anbiyāʾ: 2],

as well as the Prophet’s words—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—“Al-Baqarah and Āl ʿImrān will come,” and similar hadiths, together with the statement they cited from him—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—“Allah created the Reminder.” Ahmad answered these proofs, explaining that they did not establish what his opponents sought to prove.

When they asked, “What do you say about the Quran: is it Allah or other than Allah?” he countered with the question of knowledge, saying: “What do you say about knowledge: is it Allah or other than Allah?”

When Abū ʿĪsā Muhammad ibn ʿĪsā Barghūth, one of their most accomplished practitioners of speculative theology, debated him, he argued that Ahmad’s position entailed attributing corporeality to Allah: if he affirmed uncreated speech for Allah, it necessarily followed that Allah was a body.

Imam Ahmad replied that the speaker’s intended meaning in using this term was unknown, and that it had no basis in the Book, the Sunnah, or scholarly consensus. No one, therefore, was entitled to compel people to use it or affirm what it denoted. He told him: “I say: He is One, the Eternal Refuge; He neither begets nor is born, and none is comparable to Him.” He thus made clear: “I say neither ‘He is a body’ nor ‘He is not a body,’ because both statements are innovations introduced into Islam.”

These, then, are not scriptural proofs whose implications people are obliged to accept when someone calls them to do so. People are obliged only to respond to the Messenger in what he calls them to, and to respond to anyone who