And I said to him:

“This affair is more serious than you imagine, for a group of these enemies have gone to the lands of the Tatars.”

He said, “To the lands of the Tatars?”

I replied, “Yes. They are among those most eager to stir up trouble against you, besides other matters that I ought not mention to you.”

He had also said to me, “So you oppose the four schools of law,” and mentioned the ruling of the four judges. I replied:

“On the contrary, what I have said accords with the position of the four imams of those schools. In Syria, I produced more than fifty books by Hanafī, Mālikī and Shāfiʿī scholars, scholars of hadith, speculative theologians and Sufis. All agree with what I said, in its very wording, and include explicit statements from the early generations of this ummah and its imams. Despite their prolonged searches through the books and libraries of the city, my opponents could not produce anything from any of Islam’s imams or early scholars that contradicted this.”

When he gave me the document, I examined it and said to him:

“All of this is false except for one statement: that He truly rose over the Throne, but without specifying how or likening Him to creation.”

I said, “This appears in ‘The Creed’ in these very words: without specifying how, asserting any likeness, distorting the meaning, or negating the attributes.”

He said, “Then write this in your own hand.”

I replied, “This was already written in ‘The Creed,’ and I have said nothing that contradicts it. What benefit, then, is there in writing it out again?”

I also said:

“More than one scholar—among the Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, scholars of hadith and others—has reported the consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah upon this wording. Among the scholars of Islam, none rejects this except these opponents.”