conforms to the Quran and the Sunnah. He said, “Such a person is under the divine will; he is not declared an unbeliever on account of a major sin, but his faith is deficient.” At that, Wāṣil rejected his answer, saying, “He is in a station between the two stations—neither an unbeliever nor a Muslim.” Thus Wāṣil invented this false doctrine, withdrew from al-Ḥasan’s circle, and those of like mind gathered around him, forming a faction that came to be known as the Muʿtazilah.

The Jahmites and the Jabrites:
They are the followers of Jahm ibn Ṣafwān (1) of Tirmidh, who adopted the views of his teacher al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham (2). Al-Jaʿd had taken them from Tālut the Jew, who had learned them from Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam—the man who cast a spell on the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Central to this school is the claim that the Quran is a created entity. Another of their tenets is jabr—absolute predeterminism, the assertion that human beings are compelled in all their actions. Because of this link to Jahm, they were labeled Jahmites. Jahm himself received the doctrine from al-Jaʿd, who lived in the final years of the Umayyad dynasty, and he was later put to death.