I say in response: This statement by the writer, which occupies no more than two lines, contains several lies about Shaykh al-Islam. They are as follows:

The first: His claim that Shaykh al-Islam affirms the attributes on the basis of fabricated hadiths and Israelite reports. This is an obvious lie about Shaykh al-Islam, as any student of knowledge who has read his books will recognize. His warnings—may Allah have mercy on him—against citing fabricated hadiths and Israelite reports as evidence or relying upon them as proof are too well known to need mentioning. We have already presented some of them. Thus, these are two lies about Shaykh al-Islam:

First: His allegation that Shaykh al-Islam uses fabricated hadiths as evidence concerning the attributes.

Second: His allegation that he uses Israelite reports as evidence concerning them.

The third lie: To illustrate his claim that Shaykh al-Islam affirms the attributes on the basis of fabricated hadiths, he cites the statement he attributes to him: “Allah speaks with a voice resembling thunder.” Yet these words do not occur in a hadith, but in a transmitted report. Shaykh al-Islam explicitly states on the very same page that it is a report. This, then, is a third lie about Shaykh al-Islam.

The fourth: The report in question is weak, not fabricated, contrary to the impression given by the writer’s presentation.

The fifth: The entire passage containing this report is not Shaykh al-Islam’s own wording. Rather, it appears in his work within a lengthy quotation from Imam Ahmad’s Refutation of the Jahmiyyah, and is found in that book (p. 45). The writer concealed this fact because his aim was to vilify Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah. This is a fifth lie.

The sixth: His claim that Shaykh al-Islam used this passage to affirm that Allah speaks with a voice resembling thunder. This is a lie about him, for he quoted the passage in full only to refute