and whose followers risk īdāʿ and being stranded.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]

I say:

What al-Khattābī has stated shows that the method of arguing from accidents belongs to the blameworthy speculative theology that the early generations and the imams condemned and shunned, as al-Ashʿarī and others have mentioned. It also shows that those who adopted this method did so because they did not follow the prophetic methods prescribed by revelation. Whoever does not follow the revealed methods has need of innovated methods, unlike those for whom Allah has made the Scripture and wisdom sufficient.

Al-Khattābī described this method as exhausting and perilous: there is reason to fear that those who follow it may prove unable to proceed or may perish.

This accords with what al-Ashʿarī and others said who did not categorically declare this method unsound. Rather, they condemned it because it was an innovation, because it was difficult and exhausting and its followers might be unable to proceed, or because it was perilous and dangerous owing to its many specious arguments.

Al-Khattābī likewise made statements conveying this meaning in his book Shiʿār al-Dīn (The Emblem of Religion). Thus, someone who does not know that this method is invalid, or who believes it to be sound, may affirm some of its implications.

Statements consistent with its implications do indeed occur in the writings of al-Khattābī and others like him. The imams of the early generations and leading scholars criticized him for this, as discussed elsewhere.

Various groups from different classes of people have fallen into this, including followers of Ahmad, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Hanīfah, and others.