reconcile the views he had adopted from the former with what he transmitted from the latter. For this reason, some say of him that he moved from explicit avowal to obfuscation. As some put it: “They are the female Jahmiyyah, while those are the male Jahmiyyah.”

His followers who understood and accepted his views on those fundamental principles openly expressed the opposition to the people of Sunnah and hadith that their position necessarily entailed. They did not stand in awe of the people of Sunnah and hadith, revere them, or believe their doctrines to be sound, as he had done. Both groups—the people of Sunnah and the Jahmiyyah—say that this is contradictory. From the Sunni perspective, however, his agreement with the people of hadith is praiseworthy, while his agreement with the Jahmiyyah is blameworthy; from the Jahmī perspective, his agreement with the people of hadith is blameworthy, while his agreement with the Jahmiyyah is praiseworthy. Thus, his later followers, such as Abū al-Ma‘ālī and others, were more overtly Jahmī and more pronounced in their negation of the divine attributes than their predecessors.

These are subtle matters in which Allah forgives those who err after exercising scholarly judgment. Yet what is correct is what the Messenger conveyed; the truth can never lie in anything contrary to it. And Allah knows best.

One of the greatest principles, affirmed by the Quran in very many passages, as well as by the hadiths, all of Allah’s other scriptures, and the words of the early generations, and also indicated by