Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—said:

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One of our trustworthy companions told me that our shaykh, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, visited our shaykh, Abū Zakariyyā ibn al-Sirmay, during his illness. A group of people were with him, and they asked him to supplicate. In his supplication he said:

“O Allah, by Your power through which You were able to say to the heavens and the earth, ‘Come, willingly or unwillingly’—they said, ‘We come willingly’—do such and such.”

Abū ʿAbd al-Wahhāb said: “I did not address this with him in front of the people. When I was alone with him, I said to him: ‘This should not be said. Had you said, “Through which You have power over Your creation” (*), that would have been permissible. But “Through which You were able to say” is not permissible, because this implies that His speech is subject to His power and is created.’”

The narrator, who is one of the distinguished scholars of the Shāfiʿī school, told me that this reached Imam Abū Zakariyyā al-Nawāwī. He did not initially discern the grounds for objecting to this supplication, but understood them once they were explained to him.

I say: This question is like that of the divine will, expressed in our statement, “He speaks when He wills,” for