Explanation

The Khawarij, for example, fasten upon the texts that threaten punishment and upon whatever appears to imply unbelief; accordingly, they declare Muslims who commit major sins to be disbelievers.

The Rafidah likewise distort the Qur’an. They maintain that the Almighty’s words, “He has let the two seas flow, meeting together” (55:19), refer to ʿAli and Fatimah, and that “the accursed tree in the Qur’an” (17:60) refers to the Umayyads. Their commentaries abound in such bizarre and reprehensible claims—may Allah protect us. They uproot words from their proper contexts: verses that convey censure they reinterpret against their opponents, while verses that convey praise they assign to those they champion.

So too the Jahmiyyah—Allah preserve us—the followers of Jahm ibn Ṣafwān, twist every verse that speaks of the divine attributes. They hold that Allah possesses no attributes at all, and that His names are nothing but markers. Some even say He has neither name nor attribute, asserting that the familiar names actually belong to His creatures, not to Him. In any case, all praise is due to Allah, “Who has guided those who believe, by His permission, to the truth about which they differed” (2:213).

As for the Muʿtazilah, the disciples of Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ and ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd, they are—as Shaykh al-Islām said—among the most loquacious and argumentative of people. They constantly defer to reason and have no regard whatsoever for textual evidence; even in matters beyond the reach of reason they insist on subjecting them to rational judgment. Their rule concerning the divine attributes is: whatever reason affirms is affirmed, whether or not it appears in the Qur’an and Sunnah; whatever reason negates is negated, whether or not it appears in the Qur’an and Sunnah; and whatever reason neither confirms nor