a body and that His attributes are neither bodies nor accidents?! Denying meanings established by revelation and reason by rejecting terms whose meanings neither revelation nor reason has negated is ignorance and misguidance.’ He said: ‘Likewise, reason …’”

Here he—may Allah have mercy on him—is reporting what those people said. Yet this writer extracted part of the passage and falsely and mendaciously attributed it to Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya. We seek refuge in Allah from such brazenness in lying and such shameless deception and falsification, and we ask Him for pardon and well-being.

As for Shaykh al-Islām’s position on the term “body,” he—may Allah have mercy on him—explained it just fifteen lines before the passage quoted by the writer!!

He—may Allah have mercy on him—said (1/100):

“To state the matter precisely, we say: The seventy-seventh point: ‘Body,’ ‘accident,’ ‘that which occupies space,’ and similar terms are technical expressions. We have already stated more than once that the early generations and the imams did not speak of these matters with respect to Allah, whether to negate or affirm them. Rather, they declared the speculative theologians innovators on that account and condemned them in the strongest terms …”

These are Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya’s words and his position on this issue. Yet the writer ignored and discarded them, passing over them in favour of words in the same passage that were not Ibn Taymiyya’s, but which he attributed to him. Truly, one never ceases to marvel at such blatant audacity in lying, betrayal, deception, misrepresentation, and falsification. Yet, despite his own professional practice of these things, the writer shamelessly accuses the Salafis in his book of being professional distorters1!!

Who, then, is the professional distorter, if you have any sense?!