The heretics—those who profess oneness, indwelling, or union—do not say that He is time itself, or that He belongs to the category of accidents and attributes. Rather, they say that He is the totality of the world, or that He indwells the totality of the world. Even if the hadith had not explained that He, glorified be He, alternates the night and the day, it would offer them no grounds for their argument. How, then, could it do so when the hadith itself states that all affairs are in His hand and that He alternates the night and the day?

Once this is clear, there are two well-known interpretations of the hadith among the scholars of Ahmad’s school and others.

The first, which is the view of Abū ʿUbayd and most scholars, is that the wording of this hadith was intended to refute what the people of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance and those who resemble them would say. Whenever a calamity befell them or their aims were thwarted, they would begin reviling time. One of them would say, “May Allah disgrace the time that scattered us, and may Allah curse the time in which such-and-such occurred.”

Expressions of this kind frequently appear in the words of poets and others, such as:

“O Time, you have done such-and-such!”

They intend to revile whoever brought about those events, but attribute them to time. Their abuse thus falls upon Allah Most High, for He is the One who brought about those events and caused them to occur. Time is His creation; He is the One who makes it alternate and directs it.

The implied meaning is: “The son of Adam reviles the one who brought about these events, and I brought them about.” Thus, when he reviles time, his intention is to revile the doer, even though he attributes the deed to time. Yet time does nothing; Allah alone is the One who acts.