—the seventy-two sects, as is related from ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak and Yūsuf ibn Asbaṭ. This is likewise the position of a number of later authorities among the followers of Aḥmad and others. More than one leading Imām—such as Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and others—pronounced unbelief upon anyone who makes this assertion, saying that it would necessitate counting Iblīs, Pharaoh, and the Jews—who know him as they know their own children—among the believers.

Thus the statement of the Jahmiyyah is still preferable to the claim of these philosophers, for what the Jahmiyyah cite is indeed the basic element by which souls are perfected. Yet they failed to combine the soul’s knowledge with its will, the source of practical power; they located perfection in mere knowledge, even when no word or deed confirms it and it is unaccompanied by fear, love, veneration, and the other foundations and requisites of faith.

As for those philosophers, they are as far from true perfection as can be.

Our purpose here is only to examine their proof; we have mentioned some of the consequences that follow from their corrupt premises merely in passing.

Know, moreover, that exposing the falsehood and self-contradiction in their discourse does not in itself mean that they are doomed in the Hereafter—unless God sends a messenger to them and they do not follow him. What it does establish is that anyone to whom the messengers bring the truth and who then turns from their path to the path of these people will be among the wretched in the Hereafter.