“This is a well-known hadith; reports concerning it have been transmitted and continue to be narrated. If people ask about its interpretation, it is not explained to them. Anyone who denies it or disputes it is regarded with suspicion. The Jahmiyyah deny it.”

Had you, O opponent, followed Wakī‘ in dealing with such difficult hadiths whose meanings are hard to grasp, that would have been safer for you than denying it on one occasion, affirming it on another, and then offering an interpretation borrowed from the faction of al-Marīsī, al-Thaljī and their like, with no basis in transmitted reports or analogy. Moreover, the people in your midst have no need for such hadiths.

You then offered an interpretation even more appalling than the first, saying: “This hadith, in which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘I came into the presence of my Lord in the Garden of Eden, a curly-haired young man,’ may mean that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, saw a young man in Paradise, one of Allah’s friends, whom His Messenger encountered in the Garden of Eden, and so he said, ‘I came into the presence of my Lord.’”

Thus, the opponent has attributed grave disbelief to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, by claiming that he entered Paradise and saw a young man who was one of Allah’s friends