And we have discussed comparable examples more than once, explaining that the Jahmiyyah’s position entails combining two contradictories: that He is existent and nonexistent, worshipped and not worshipped, and that worshipping Him is both commanded and forbidden. In reality, it commands the worship of sheer nonexistence and pure negation, and the abandonment of worshipping Allah, glorified is He. This is the very essence of disbelief and its root, and it is an inescapable consequence of their position. If a person has faith, he does not intend this. But whoever first introduced this negation while knowing its implications was among the worst hypocrites and heretics who deny the Creator and reject worshipping Him and calling upon Him.

This is why you find that such negation is frequent only among those Jahmī theologians who neither worship Allah nor turn repentantly to Him nor direct themselves toward Him. If they pray, they pray with heedless hearts; if they call upon Him, they do so with distracted hearts that do not truly direct themselves toward the One worshipped and invoked. For whenever these hearts are sincere in worship and supplication, they are compelled to direct themselves toward an existent being in some direction relative to them. They then shift to the condition of the worshippers among the Jahmiyyah, regarding Him as being everywhere or as absolute existence, and the individual turns his heart toward all six directions. Thus, having denied that He is in any of the six directions, he comes to affirm that He is in all six directions. Such is the condition of