to the point that Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, said in his book Al-Juyūsh al-Islāmiyyah (p. 96):
“Indeed, the war that rages between the people of ḥadith and the Jahmiyyah is more intense than that between the army of disbelief and the army of Islam.”

I say: In spite of all this, we see that most of today’s Islamic preachers attach no weight whatsoever to this question—or to similar questions of creed—and pay it no attention at all. You will not hear it addressed in their lectures or even in their private gatherings, let alone in front of the general public. They are satisfied so long as those they call to Islam profess a vague, undifferentiated faith. Do you not see that scholar who, in the introduction to his booklet “Bāṭin al-Ithm,” while claiming to prescribe a cure for Muslims who are fragmented and estranged from one another, wrote:
“I can only suppose that we are all believers in Allah, one God without partner; in His hand lie all good and all sovereignty, and He has power over all things.”

Yes, we are believers in Allah—but the faith of believers differs widely from one person to another, and the issue of Allah’s exaltedness above creation is the clearest example. If that doctor affirms it in the manner of the early generations—affirming it without likening Allah to His creation and without nullifying His attributes—then the very people for whom he wrote his booklet do not share that belief, unless he himself shares theirs! What benefit, then, is such a faith when it is not in accordance with what Allah has legislated and clarified? Imām Abū Muḥammad al-Juwaynī pointed to this reality in the introduction to his aforementioned treatise “Al-Istiwaʾ wa’l-Fawqiyyah” after listing some of Allah’s attributes—hearing, sight, speech, the two hands, and the two closed fists—saying:
“He rose over His Throne and is therefore distinct from what lies beneath Him; nothing of His creation is hidden from Him. His knowledge encompasses them, and His sight penetrates them. In His essence and His attributes nothing resembles Him among His creatures, nor is He to be likened to any of the newly-fashioned limbs they imagine. These are attributes befitting His majesty and greatness; no mind can conceive their modality, and no eye in this world can behold them. Rather, we believe in their realities and their proven existence, and that the Lord—exalted is He—is characterized by them. We repudiate the figurative interpretations of the allegorizers, the negation of the deniers, and the likening of the anthropomorphists. Blessed is Allah, the best of creators.”