—and if blatant immorality appears—they claim that this is “enjoining right and forbidding wrong,” while what they are really calling for is rebellion against the Muslim rulers.
The Muʿtazilah build their theology on five fundamentals:
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Tawḥīd (pure monotheism), which for them means denying the divine attributes; anyone who affirms the attributes, they declare a polytheist.
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Justice, which they interpret as denying the divine decree (qadar). They argue that affirming predestination would be tyranny and injustice, insisting that God is obliged to act “justly.”
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Enjoining right and forbidding wrong, by which they expressly intend rising up against the leaders of the Muslims when those leaders commit sins short of unbelief. In reality, this is itself a wrongdoing and has nothing to do with true righteousness.
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The “intermediate position between two positions”: they rule that a Muslim who commits a major sin leaves Islam but does not yet enter unbelief, whereas the Khārijites pronounce him an outright disbeliever.
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Carrying out the divine threat: they hold that anyone who dies persisting in a major sin short of shirk will dwell forever in Hell. Thus they agree with the Khārijites regarding his ultimate fate in the next life, though they differ in assigning him, in this life, to that intermediate state. The judge ʿAbd al-Jabbār, one of their leading figures, wrote a treatise on these points entitled Sharḥ al-Uṣūl al-Khamsah (Commentary on the Five Principles).