Moreover, one of his principles was not to advance any innovated view in religion. They kept demanding that he affirm what they had invented, and he would reply: “How can I say what has never been said?” How, then, could he conceal a statement that none of Allah’s creation had ever uttered before him?

Furthermore, Ahmad ibn al-Hasan al-Tirmidhī was among his closest and most distinguished companions. What reason, then, would he have to conceal his true beliefs from him?

Nor was there any need for him to say, “Human speech is created.” He mentioned this only as evidence and by way of illustration. How, then, could he volunteer a statement he considered false when no one had asked him about it?

Moreover, he could simply have remained silent about this. When someone fears making a view known, he conceals it. But volunteering a statement that no one has requested, while believing it to be false, is something that even a person with the least intelligence, knowledge, or religious commitment would not do.

Anyone who reviles Imam Ahmad—whose service to Islam and its people surpasses what anyone can describe or fully appreciate—deserves a punishment so severe that it deters every lying fabricator who makes reckless conjectures, slanders others, and says about Allah, His Messenger, the believers, and their imams what not even a hypocritical enemy would say.

Moreover, he mentioned this in his work, “Refutation of the Heretics