in reports concerning Allah’s attributes—they interpret the hadith to conform to their reason, explicitly give their reason precedence over the hadith, and make it the standard by which the hadith is judged. I would ask: does the law revealed to Muhammad explicitly prescribe giving precedence to this reason of theirs, so that it belongs to the way we are commanded to follow? Or is it the reason of an ignorant, misguided, bewildered innovator who has departed from that way? There is no power nor strength except through Allah.

These Ittihādiyyah (who identify Allah with creation) and others like them have gone astray only because of their deficient knowledge of, and faith in, Allah’s attributes, by which He is distinct from created beings, and their failure to follow the Sunnah and the way of the early generations in this matter. Indeed, they may hold Jahmī beliefs that contradict the Sunnah, having received them from someone given to philosophizing or speculative theology. Those beliefs then obstruct their path to Allah. Whenever their hearts seek to draw near to their Lord, follow the straight path to Him, and worship Him—in accordance with their innate disposition and what the messengers conveyed to them concerning His being on high and His greatness—those misleading obstacles turn them away from this. Thus, you find many who follow the Jahmiyyah uncritically agreeing with them in speech, while their hearts remain true to their innate disposition and the Sunnah. Most of them do not understand the negation they utter; rather, they regard it as an unqualified, general declaration of Allah’s transcendence. Some do not understand the Jahmiyyah’s position at all. Instead, they understand the negation in a sound sense, believe that those who affirm the divine attributes affirm its opposite, and hear some people say so.

For example, they may understand the statement, “He is not in any direction, has no place, and is not in heaven,” to mean that He is not within the heavens. This is a sound meaning, and their belief in it is correct, but