or the Sunnah, until some people in the eighth century AH introduced and advocated this innovation. This certainly carries no weight. What is this drivel about a division fabricated by those lying innovators?! …”
I say: His assertion that the two terms necessarily entail one another amounts to an acknowledgment that they are not one and the same. He has thus contradicted himself: as noted earlier, he maintains that affirming Allah’s oneness in lordship is the same as affirming His oneness in worship, yet he also maintains that the two necessarily entail one another. Necessary entailment is not spoken of between a thing and itself, but between one thing and another. In any case, I have already adequately refuted this error and ignorance of his with evidence and statements from the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah. But here I ask the writer: who are these lying innovators who spout drivel about this division?
Are they Imam Abū Hanīfah, Judge Abū Yūsuf, al-Tahāwī, Ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī, Ibn Battah, Ibn Mandah, Abū Ismāʿīl al-Taymī, Ibn Hibbān, Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Kathīr, al-Dhahabī, al-Sanʿānī, al-Shawkānī, al-Maqrīzī, Ibn Abī al-ʿIzz, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, all their students, and Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī?!
All these scholars and others affirm this division. As we explained earlier, it is explicit in the Book of Allah, and it is the position of all of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah. Who, then, are the lying innovators who spout drivel and rant about what they do not know?! Glory be to You, my Lord! This is a monstrous slander.
9 The writer said on p. 10: “Fourth: Ibn Taymiyyah, who invented the division of affirming Allah’s oneness into two categories—His oneness in worship and His oneness in lordship—says that the polytheists affirmed Allah’s oneness in lordship but not His oneness in worship, and that Muslims who disagree with his views likewise affirmed His oneness in lordship but not His oneness in worship. He therefore declares them unbelievers on this basis, and this is his purpose in making the division.”