and they classify the words of Allah and His Messenger that contradict their doctrines as ambiguous passages whose meaning is known only to Allah, or only to those firmly grounded in knowledge. In their view, those firmly grounded in knowledge are those who agree with their position. These people are more astray than those who cling to verses of the Book that they find ambiguous and abandon its clear passages, such as the Christians, the Khawārij, and others. For these latter took ambiguous passages from Allah’s words and treated them as definitive, while treating the clear passages as ambiguous.

As for the former—such as the Jahmiyyah who deny Allah’s attributes, those among the Muʿtazilah and others who agree with them, and the philosophers—they treat what they themselves have devised through their own opinions as the definitive foundation that must be followed, even if they have nothing from the prophets, the Book, or the Sunnah to support it. They classify what the prophets brought as ambiguous, even when it is explicit and its meaning may be self-evident.

For this reason, these people oppose the prophets more profoundly than all other adherents of religious innovation. Indeed, Yūsuf ibn Asbāt, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, and others, including a group of Ahmad’s followers, said:

“The Jahmiyyah who deny Allah’s attributes fall outside the seventy-two sects.”

They said: “The four principal sects are the Shīʿah, the Khawārij, the Murjiʾah, and the Qadariyyah.”

We have mentioned elsewhere that, concerning the ambiguous verses in Allah Most High’s words,

“In it are clear and definitive verses, which are the foundation of the Book, while others are ambiguous,”

there are two views: