which those others denied.

Anyone who reflects on the innovations of the Jahmiyyah and others like them will find that they generally arise from discussions surrounding this claim and argument.

For this reason, the early generations and the imams condemned their discussions of substances and accidents, and their building religious knowledge upon these premises. We have discussed this at length elsewhere.

Imam Abū al-Muzaffar al-Sam‘ānī said:

“The foundation that the speculative theologians establish and make the basis of their sciences is ‘the question of accident and substance and establishing their existence.’ They maintain that things necessarily fall into one of three categories: body, accident, or substance. A body is what is formed by joining separate things; a substance is that which bears accidents; and an accident is that which does not subsist in itself, but only in something else. They classified the spirit among accidents and rejected reports from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that did not accord with their reasoning and intellects.

“For this reason, some of the early scholars said: ‘The practitioners of speculative theology are enemies of religion, because