affirms such scripturally attested attributes as Allah Most High wills. The foundation of the doctrine transmitted from them is to affirm every attribute mentioned in the Quran. As for the attributes mentioned in hadith, some of them affirm these, while others do not.

If you condemn all those who affirm the attributes, including your predecessors and others, you are left with none but the Jahmiyya: the Muʿtazila and those among the later Ashʿarīs and others who agree with them in denying the scripturally attested attributes. Yet you have offered no argument that can be relied upon. How can people be censured for not shying away from the position held by the early generations of the Muslim community, its leading scholars, and the very scholars whom their critic follows?

If, however, you do not include those who affirm the scripturally attested attributes under the label “al-Hashwiyya,” this statement does not help you. Indeed, you yourself have espoused this position elsewhere. If a person’s words leave him no alternative but to condemn either himself or his predecessors—whose standing as leading scholars he acknowledges, and whom he recognizes as superior to their followers—then, in either case, this condemnation falls upon him.

He would also share something of the character of the Khawārij, to the first of whom the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“You would indeed be ruined and at a loss if I did not act justly.”

That is to say: if you acknowledge that I am Allah’s Messenger, yet claim that I act unjustly, then you are ruined and at a loss. Likewise, anyone who condemns those whom he acknowledges to be the finest and best members of the Muslim community, and from whom his own group received its knowledge and faith, is ruined and at a loss through this condemnation. Such is the condition of the Rāfida in their condemnation of the Companions.