with Him whatsoever. Thus, no one besides Him may have any share in the worship and its attendant acts that belong exclusively to Him. This concerns deeds. As for words, it consists in believing in the attributes with which He has described Himself and with which His Messenger has described Him.

If you mean that the doctrine of the early generations is divine oneness in the sense conveyed by the Quran and Sunnah, then this is true. Those who affirm the divine attributes known from scriptural reports do not disagree with this.

But if you mean that the doctrine of the early generations is divine oneness and transcendence as certain groups understand them, then anyone who examines the reliably transmitted statements of the early generations, preserved in collections of their reports, knows this to be false. Not a single statement from any of the early generations agrees with the distinctive positions of these groups, nor does a single statement deny the divine attributes known from scriptural reports.

It is well known that if the doctrine of the early generations is to be established through transmission from them, then one must refer to the reports transmitted from them. But if it is to be established solely through inference, whereby anyone who considers a view correct says:

“This is the view of the early generations, because the early generations say only what is correct, and this is correct,”

then this is precisely what emboldens each of the proponents of religious innovation to claim that he follows the doctrine of the early generations. Whoever makes this statement has exposed his own fault: he has claimed adherence to their doctrine without transmitting anything from them, relying instead on his assertion that his own view is the truth.

As for the scholars of hadith, they describe the doctrine of the early generations only through mass-transmitted reports