Then Allah Most High recounts Abraham’s argument with the man who disputed with him about his Lord:

“When Abraham said, ‘My Lord is He who gives life and causes death,’ he replied, ‘I give life and cause death.’ Abraham said, ‘Allah brings the sun from the east, so bring it from the west.’ Thus the disbeliever was dumbfounded.”

[al-Baqarah: 258]

He also recounts Abraham’s argument with his people, who worshipped the celestial bodies.

The Jahmiyyah, who deny the divine attributes and are the leading exponents of blameworthy speculative theology, derive their doctrine from that of Abraham’s opponents, just as they derive it from that of Pharaoh, the opponent of Moses, peace be upon him. Pharaoh openly denied the Creator, His exaltedness above His creation, and His speaking to Moses.

Abraham’s people were polytheists, as Allah Most High tells us, and among them were proponents of negation, as Allah Most High also mentions.

Among the philosophers who advocate invoking the celestial bodies are both polytheists and proponents of negation. Denial of the divine attributes is among their doctrines. Some do not affirm that this observable world has a Lord who originated it—as is the position of the naturalist eternalists among them—and regard the world itself as necessarily existent in itself. Others affirm that it has an originator, necessarily existent in Himself, who brought it into being—as is the position of the theistic eternalists among them. They say that the Necessary Existent has no positive attributes; rather, His attributes are either negations, relations, or combinations of the two.

Al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham was from Harrān, where there were remnants of the Sabians and philosophers—the opponents of Abraham, the close friend of Allah, peace be upon him. Hence he denied Allah’s speaking to Moses and His taking Abraham as a close friend, in agreement with Pharaoh and Nimrod, on the basis of the principle held by these