and the vast majority hashw (the common masses), just as the Rāfida call them ‘the general populace.’ The expression hashw al-nās refers to people at large, the general populace, rather than distinguished individuals. They say, ‘He is one of the common masses,’ just as one says, ‘He is one of the general populace.’ The first to use this expression was ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd, who said, ‘‘Abdullāh ibn ‘Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, was a Hashwī.’ Thus, the Mu‘tazila called the community hashw, just as the Rāfida call them ‘the general populace.’”

I said—I do not recall whether this was in the first session or the second—“The first to say that Allah is a body was Hishām ibn al-Hakam, the Rāfidī.”

I said to this shaykh:

“Which of Imam Ahmad’s followers—may Allah have mercy on him—is a Hashwī in the sense you intend? Al-Athram, Abū Dāwūd, al-Marwadhī, al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī, Ibn Hāmid, al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, Abū al-Khattāb, Ibn ‘Aqīl?”

I raised my voice and said:

“Name them! Tell me which of them! Who are they? Are Ibn al-Khatīb’s lies and fabrications about people’s beliefs to invalidate the Sharia and erase the defining features of the religion?

“For instance, he and others attributed to them the assertion that the eternal Quran consists of the voices of its reciters and the ink of its scribes, and that these voices and this ink are eternal, without beginning. Who said this? In which book is this found as a statement of theirs? Tell me! The same applies to the claim attributed to them that Allah will not be seen in the Hereafter, based on the implication he alleged and the premise he attributed to them.”

I then began to speak of the regard this shaykh deserved, noting that he was the elder of the group