—a proof free of flaws—unlike the case of someone who is measured in what he says and strives to speak rightly. Allah will set his deeds right, as He Most High says:
“O you who have believed, fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice.”
“He will amend for you your deeds and forgive you your sins.”
Another element of truth in his statement is its indication that those who claim to follow the way of the early generations should be refuted when they are ignorant of their teachings or depart from them through additions or omissions. Likening Allah to His creation and falsely attributing statements to the early generations are reprehensible, whether or not this is called hashw. This applies to many extremists among those who affirm the divine attributes and transmit fabricated hadiths concerning them, such as the report about “the sweat of horses”; “His descent late on the day of ‘Arafah upon a dark-grey camel, to shake hands with those on foot and embrace those riding”; “His manifesting Himself to His Prophet on earth”; “his seeing Him on a chair between heaven and earth”; “his seeing Him during circumambulation”; or “in some of the lanes of Medina”—and other fabricated hadiths of this kind.
I have seen examples of this that rank among the gravest abominations and acts of disbelief. Several people have brought me booklets and books containing such fabrications against Allah and His Messenger. Chains of transmission have been fabricated for these hadiths. Indeed, one of them took a book written by Shaykh Abū al-Faraj al-Maqdisī concerning the criteria by which a follower of the Sunnah is distinguished from an adherent of innovation, and presented it as something Allah had revealed to His Prophet on the night of the Ascension, commanding him to test people by it: whoever accepted it was a follower of the Sunnah, and whoever did not was an adherent of innovation. They also added to it things that Shaykh Abū al-Faraj had never said, nor would any rational person say.
A well-known figure may say, regarding questions