It has been explained elsewhere that these people are more deeply steeped in disbelief than the Jews and Christians after the abrogation and alteration of their religions, even if they profess Islam. For they openly display greater opposition to Islam than the hypocrites displayed during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Hudhayfa ibn al-Yamān, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “The hypocrites today are worse than the hypocrites during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.” He was asked, “Why is that?” He replied, “Because they used to conceal their hypocrisy, whereas today they proclaim it openly.”
Yet in Hudhayfa’s time, no one had reached this degree of hypocrisy, or anything close to it. These people only emerged among Muslims during the “Abbasid dynasty” and toward the end of the “Umayyad dynasty,” when Greek and similar works were translated into Arabic. They have been refuted at length elsewhere.
The point here is that these speculative theologians who claimed to have refuted them did not, in fact, do as they claimed. Rather, they opened the gateway to heresy for them. Thus, many who joined these heretics entered through the door of those speculative theologians, such as Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Sabʿīn, and others. Whenever someone rises to refute these heretics, they seek support and assistance from those innovating speculative theologians, who help them against those who champion the cause of Allah and His Messenger. They thus serve as their troops in waging war against Allah and His Messenger, as has indeed been witnessed firsthand.
Their claim that this is the method of Abraham, the intimate friend of Allah, in his words:
“I do not love those that set,”
is a manifest lie about Abraham. For setting means disappearing and becoming hidden, by agreement of the scholars of language and Quranic commentary. This is a plain matter of linguistic usage, and it makes no difference whether “setting” means the disappearance of the light of