and their earliest leader. This is why this argument compelled him to attribute to the Lord—exalted and holy is He—a form of indwelling and union resembling what the Christians asserted concerning Christ. They, however, confined this to Christ, whereas the Jahmiyyah extend it to all existing things. Thus their assertion that He is everywhere parallels the Christians’ assertion that He dwells in Christ.

With this clarified, we say: the theologians and philosophers, despite all their differing positions, are inconsistent in reasoning by analogy from the observable to the unobservable. Each employs this reasoning in support of what he affirms but rejects it concerning what he denies, even though it is more applicable to what he denies than to what he affirms. He rejects his opponent’s use of such reasoning, although he himself has elsewhere employed a weaker form of it. The reason is that they have not followed a straight path. Rather, their acceptance or rejection of an analogy has come to depend on the position it supports, not on the merits of the rational analogy itself.

You find them treating the prophetic texts in the same way: each accepts what agrees with his position and rejects what contradicts it, even when the reports he rejects are accepted by the consensus of the scholars and hadith specialists, while the hadiths he accepts are fabricated by their consensus. Their treatment of rational analogies is thus like their treatment