As for the Kullābiyyah, they affirm the attributes in general. The Ash'arīs do likewise, but—as Shaykh Abū Ismā'īl al-Ansārī said—they are the female Jahmiyyah. They are the effeminate counterparts of the Mu'tazilah.

Some say that the Mu'tazilah are the effeminate counterparts of the philosophers. Al-Ash'arī and others have mentioned this. This is either because those who said it did not know that Jahm had preceded them in adopting this principle, or because they are the philosophers’ effeminate counterparts in certain respects. Otherwise, their differences with the philosophers are very substantial indeed.

According to al-Shahrastānī’s account of their leading scholars, what they adopted came from the philosophers. This is because al-Shahrastānī has in view only the debates of his Ash'arī colleagues with the Mu'tazilah concerning the attributes and similar matters. By contrast, the imams of the Sunnah and hadith debated the Jahmiyyah, who were well known among the early generations and the Muslim community for denying the attributes.

The early generations called those who denied and negated the attributes the Jahmiyyah. This was the distinguishing feature by which they set them apart from all other groups.

As for the Mu'tazilah, they were distinguished by their doctrine of a position between the two positions, which 'Amr ibn 'Ubayd introduced. He and his companions would sit apart from the gathering, so Qatādah and others would say, “Those are the Mu'tazilah.” This was after the death of al-Hasan al-Basrī, in the early second century AH.