He also said—may Allah have mercy on him:

Imām Aḥmad, for example, had direct dealings with the Jahmiyyah who summoned him to affirm that the Qur’an was created and to deny the divine attributes. They tested him and the other scholars of his day, and they persecuted the believing men and women who would not subscribe to their Jahmite stance: they flogged them, imprisoned them, executed them, dismissed them from office, cut off their livelihoods, rejected their testimony, and refrained from ransoming them from the enemy.

Many of those in power at the time—whether governors, judges, or others—were Jahmites. They branded as unbelievers everyone who refused to side with them in denying the attributes, such as by claiming that the Qur’an is created, and they applied to such people the rulings they applied to outright disbelievers… It is obvious that this is the most extreme form of Jahmism: calling others to adopt the doctrine is graver than merely holding it, rewarding its adherents and punishing those who reject it is graver still, and punishing by execution is even graver than punishing by beating.

Yet Imām Aḥmad prayed for the caliph and the others who had beaten and imprisoned him; he sought Allah’s forgiveness for them and absolved them of the wrong they had done him by compelling him to adopt a statement that constitutes disbelief. Had they truly apostatized from Islam, it would not have been permissible to seek forgiveness for them, for asking forgiveness for unbelievers is forbidden by the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the scholars.1

As for the difficulty raised concerning this book—namely, that some scholars have questioned its attribution to Imām Aḥmad, may Allah have mercy on him2—indeed