divided and confused. Yet Allah Most High says: ‘Today I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and chosen Islam as your religion.’ 1 We therefore need nothing outside the Book and the Sunnah to complete it …” End of quotation.

Al-Qārī’s words, “Indeed, most of the Quran’s surahs …,” through to “… those who have departed from tawhīd,” are quoted verbatim from Madārij al-Sālikīn by the eminent Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (3/450). I have already quoted Ibn al-Qayyim’s passage from al-Madārij in full above.

Accordingly, we ask the writer: Do you also consider Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī “an adherent of a false doctrine and a follower of a group of innovators”?! Does your denunciation extend to him because he followed the approach of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah and his student, the eminent scholar Ibn al-Qayyim, in adopting this classification?!

Fourth: Even if you were to say, for the sake of argument, that all of them were influenced by this school (and what an excellent school it is!), what would you say about Imam Abū Hanīfah, his companion Judge Abū Yūsuf, and Imam Abū Jaʿfar al-Tahāwī—may Allah have mercy on them? I have already quoted their statements, which mention the three categories of tawhīd! All of these men were leading Hanafi scholars. They affirmed the truth and spoke correctly, relying on the Book and the Sunnah without turning to “this person’s opinion, that person’s spiritual taste, or another’s inner experience in the foundations of religion.” What, then, would you say?

Fifth: We also say to the writer that the speculative theologians with whom you identify and whom you defend themselves divide tawhīd into three categories. Shaykh al-Islām said: “Most speculative theologians who expound tawhīd in their books on speculative theology and rational inquiry go no further than dividing tawhīd into three types. They say: He is One in His essence, without division, and One in His attributes