“No one introduces an innovation without the sweetness of hadith being taken from his heart.”

Moreover, the position with which he opposes the scriptural texts inevitably mixes truth with falsehood through the equivocal and ambiguous expressions he uses. Hence Imam Ahmad said, at the beginning of his Refutation of the Heretics and the Jahmiyyah concerning the Ambiguous Passages of the Quran about Which They Entertained Doubts and Which They Misinterpreted—a work he wrote during his imprisonment. Al-Khallāl mentioned it in his Book of the Sunnah, as did Judge Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Fadl al-Tamīmī, Abū al-Wafāʾ ibn ʿAqīl, and several other followers of Ahmad. None of them denied its attribution to him, and all praise belongs to Allah. The statement relevant here is:

“They speak in ambiguous language and deceive ignorant people through the confusion they create for them.”

If they are calling people to their doctrine and requiring them to adhere to it, they may be told:

“No one is obliged to answer any caller except when he calls to what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, called to. Unless it is established that the Messenger called people to something, people are not obliged to answer anyone who calls to it, nor is he entitled to call people to it—even supposing that the meaning in question is true.”

This approach is more effective when one of their deceivers misleads those in authority and they draw them into their innovations. This is what the Jahmiyyah did to the caliphs whom they misled, drawing them into their innovations, such as the doctrine that the Quran is created and other such doctrines. One of the best ways to debate them was therefore to say:

“Bring us evidence from the Book or the Sunnah, and we will accept what you call us to. Otherwise, we will not accept from you anything for which the Book and the Sunnah provide no evidence.”