—replacing the emphatic consonant with its plain counterpart and altering the vowel endings as well—and he rendered every occurrence of “al-mukhlisīn” in the Qur’an with a kasrah on the lām, a reading transmitted by only a few reciters. His aim was to make sincerity entirely their own doing, leaving God no share in it. Yet what will he do with the verse: “Indeed We purified them with a special grace: the remembrance of the Hereafter” (38:46)?

He likewise recited, “Do not think that We prolong their days for the unbelievers for their own good; We only prolong their days so that they may increase in sin” (3:178), by giving the first innamā a kasrah and the second a fatḥah. In his wording the sense becomes: “Let not the unbelievers suppose that the only reason We grant them respite is so that they may increase in sin; rather, We grant them respite because it is good for them.” Thus he distorted the meaning, diverted it from its course, and made God’s granting of reprieve to the unbelievers nothing but a kindness He desires for them.

Some even went so far as to read, “so that they may increase in faith,” inserting this wording into certain codices in the hope that it would remain for all time and people would accept it as a valid reading. But how could they succeed when God states next to it, “and for them is a humiliating punishment”?

Refutation of the Compulsionists

When a number of those who affirm God’s decree saw the excesses of these folk and the many disputes among them, their aversion and contentiousness drove them to counter extravagance with extravagance. They therefore adopted Jahm’s doctrine of sheer compulsion, asserting that the servant who is commanded and forbidden, the morally responsible human being, is in reality incapable of any good or evil and performs nothing at all. Every deed ascribed to him, they said, is only metaphorical—just as one says of an inanimate object, “the wall leaned,” meaning “it was made to lean,” or “the cold left,” meaning “it was driven away.” Both parties are mistaken and have swerved from the balanced truth.