is a disbeliever who must be called to repent; if he repents, all well and good. If not, his neck is to be struck and his corpse thrown onto a refuse-heap, lest its stench offend the people of the qiblah or the protected non-Muslims.

Ibn Khuzaymah was a leading authority in hadith and in jurisprudence, a champion of the Sunnah, one of the most forceful affirmers of the divine attributes. He enjoyed immense prestige in Khurasan. He studied law under al-Muzani and heard hadith from ʿAli b. Ḥujar and others of that tier. He died in 311 AH at a little over eighty years of age—may Allah have mercy on him, amen.

260 – I said: Al-Harawi also recorded it in Dhamm al-Kalām 6/124/2 through another chain from Ibn Hāniʾ. The apparent case is that he is reliable, for Ibn Taymiyyah declared this isnād sound in al-Ḥamawiyyah, p. 117.

110 – Ibn Surayj, the jurist of Iraq (249–306 AH)

277 – The Imām Abū al-Qāsim Saʿd b. ʿAli al-Zanjānī / 261 said:

You asked—may Allah assist you—for a clear statement of what has been authenticated for me concerning the creed of the early generations and the upright later scholars regarding the divine attributes. After seeking Allah’s guidance, I have replied with the words of the jurist Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿUmar Ibn Surayj—who was himself asked about this. Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Muḥammad the jurist said: I heard some of our teachers say that Ibn Surayj —may Allah have mercy on him—was asked about Allah’s attributes, and he replied:

“It is forbidden for minds to liken Allah, for imaginations to delimit Him, and for intellects to describe Him except with what He has described Himself in His Book or upon the tongue of His Messenger. It is unanimously established among all people of religion and Sunnah up to our time that every verse and every authentic report from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ must be believed just as it has come, and that asking about their meanings is an innovation, while answering such questions is disbelief and heresy. This includes His saying, ‘Are they waiting for anything except that Allah should come to them in canopies of clouds’ (Q 2:210); His saying, ‘The All-Merciful rose over the Throne’ (Q 20:5); ‘Your Lord will come with the angels, rank upon rank’ (Q 89:22); and the like of these, such as what the Quran articulates about His exaltedness above (al-fawqiyyah)…”