in terms of will, or hearing and sight in terms of knowledge, or speech, will, and power in terms of knowledge. Yet the same reasoning applies to the second attribute as to the first: whatever implications follow from affirming or denying the attribute he denied also follow from the other.
Thus, besides combining various forms of sophistry in rational matters with Qarmatian distortion of revealed texts, he has distinguished between things that are alike, applying a different judgment to each. He has stripped the texts of what they entail and denied some of the attributes of perfection that rightfully belong to Allah. Moreover, someone who denies what he himself affirms can gain the upper hand over him, raising against what he affirms the very same objections that he raises against those who affirm what he denies—even though the person denying what he affirms is still more inconsistent than he is.
These people then make their invented, ambiguous statements into a religion, taking them as the basis for allegiance and hostility. Indeed, they declare those who disagree with their innovations to be disbelievers. One of them says:
“Whoever errs in matters concerning the foundations of religion becomes a disbeliever.”
Yet those very matters are their own inventions.
It is well known that the Khawārij are renegade innovators. Their condemnation and censure are established by widely transmitted reports from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and by the consensus of the Companions. They merely interpreted verses of the Quran according to their own beliefs and declared whoever disagreed with those interpretations a disbeliever, believing that he had contradicted the Quran. Anyone who invents statements with no basis in the Quran and declares whoever disagrees with them a disbeliever holds a position worse than that of the Khawārij. For this reason, the early generations and the leading scholars agreed that the position of the Jahmīs is worse than that of the Khawārij.
The foundation of the Jahmī position is the denial of Allah’s attributes through what they claim to be rational arguments, which they set against the revealed texts. For sound reason, whose propositions deserve to be called