on al-Jawhara, as well as Matn al-Dardīr, and you will know for certain why victory has been delayed for us!

They go to great extremes in refuting the innovators, to the point that they themselves depart from what is correct. Indeed, one could say that their doctrines are reactions and attempts to reconcile the various innovated schools! I will not dwell on further examples; what has already been mentioned is sufficient.

The Ashʿarīs affirm only seven of Allah Most High’s attributes, claiming that reason establishes these seven attributes; they therefore affirm them because reason indicates them. As for all the others, reason does not indicate them, so, they say, we must interpret them figuratively. Thus, they affirm nothing on the authority of the Quran or the sunnah. The attributes they affirm are hearing, sight, speech, life, knowledge, power, and will. They deny all the other attributes conveyed in the ninety-nine Most Beautiful Names! They also deny the attributes of the Face, the two Hands, the Eye, descent, coming, rising over, exaltedness, being above, and others.

This is some of what these people hold. Yet there is a major fact attested by the leading Ashʿarī scholars themselves—such as al-Juwaynī, Ibn Abī al-Maʿālī, al-Rāzī, al-Ghazālī, and others—namely, that they proclaimed their bewilderment and repentance and returned to the way of the Salaf. Even staunchly partisan Ashʿarī works, such as Tabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, mention this, or part of it, in their biographies. What does that indicate? If they had originally adhered to the creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah, what did they renounce? Why did they renounce it? And to which creed did they return? (1)