the Quran is the uncreated speech of Allah, and that faith necessarily entails affirmation by both the heart and the tongue. Thus, according to all of them, anyone who insults Allah and His Messenger is a disbeliever both inwardly and outwardly. Those who agree with Jahm’s position on faith because Abū al-Hasan championed it alternate between adopting the position of the early generations and the imams and adopting that of the speculative theologians who agree with Jahm.
Even on the question of insulting Allah and His Messenger, I have seen some Hanbalīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Mālikīs say, when speaking in the terms of the imams:
“This constitutes disbelief both inwardly and outwardly.”
Yet when speaking in the terms of those theologians, they say:
“This constitutes outward disbelief, but inwardly the person may be a believer whose faith is complete.”
For, in their view, faith is indivisible. When al-Qādī ʿIyād learned that some members of his own school held this position, he rejected it and defended the position of Mālik and Ahl al-Sunnah, and he did well in doing so. I have discussed some matters relating to this in my book, “The Unsheathed Sword against the One Who Insults the Messenger.”
Likewise, on questions of faith, you find them citing the positions of the imams and the early generations while pursuing lines of argument consistent with the Jahmiyyah’s position. This is because they took their arguments from the books of speculative theologians who championed Jahm’s position on questions of faith. When al-Rāzī wrote “The Merits of al-Shāfiʿī,” he cited al-Shāfiʿī’s position on faith. Al-Shāfiʿī’s position is that of the Companions and the Successors; indeed, al-Shāfiʿī stated that it was the consensus of the Companions, the Successors, and those whom he had met.
Al-Rāzī found al-Shāfiʿī’s position exceedingly difficult to accept because the specious argument concerning faith advanced by the people of innovation had already taken firm hold in his mind: the Khawārij, the Muʿtazilah, the Jahmiyyah, and the Karrāmiyyah