and, when accompanied by a good intention, it merits appreciation inwardly as well as outwardly. It deserves this appreciation because it supports the Sunnah and the religion. Likewise, whoever champions Islam and the Sunnah deserves appreciation in this respect. People of every kind are thus praised by Allah, His Messenger, and His believing servants according to the extent to which they conform to Allah’s religion, His Messenger’s Sunnah, and His law; for praise is given only for good deeds.

Good deeds are those that accord with obedience to Allah and His Messenger: affirming the truth of what Allah has conveyed and obeying His commands. This is the Sunnah. All goodness—by the consensus of the Muslim community—lies in what the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, brought. Likewise, those who depart from the Sunnah, the sacred law, and obedience to Allah and His Messenger are censured only for contravening these. Whenever people of faith criticize anyone—whether a scholar, a ruler, or someone else—they do so only because he has contravened the Sunnah and the sacred law.

On this basis, the early generations and the imams censured the proponents of speculative theology and the theologians who affirm the divine attributes, such as Ibn Karrām, Ibn Kullāb, and al-Ash‘arī. Those eminent figures of the Muslim community and its acknowledged imams—from all groups of jurists, hadith scholars, and Sufis—who spoke critically of him did so only concerning matters in which they said these theologians had opposed the Sunnah and hadith: either because it had escaped their notice, because they had turned away from it, or because a principle of analogical reasoning they had established required them to reject it. Something similar also occurs in [theoretical] matters (*).