They strayed from the religion except when they attacked the Imamiyyah...

They strayed from the religion except when they attacked the Imamiyyah, and were feeble liars except when they attributed an infamy to the Imamiyyah or spoke of them degradingly. I will not extend the discussion to what they said about Wasil ibn ‘Ata’, ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd, Abu 'l-Hudhayl, Thumamah ibn Ashras, an-Nazzam, and others like them among the leading personalities of the Mu‘tazilah and their scholars.

What is worse than this is that they followed and promoted the methods of their brothers-in-law the Mu‘tazilah, who were their adversaries in dogma, and distorted and changed, discarded and added, perfected – as they claim – what they found tacking in the Mu‘tazili armoury, and patched up any weakness they stumbled on. I have quoted examples of this above, and a few more will follow.

I do not intend in saying this that these observations should refute what they wrote about the characteristics of their masters – I have previously stated that I have given up this kind of hope. I have said what I have said by way of introduction to some of the ideas of Hisham ibn al-Hakam and the views attributed to him.

The Mu‘Tazilis found fault with Hisham and fabricated false positions for him, the Anti-Mu‘Tazilis agreed with them here but not always elsewhere I shall not be led here to speak in detail of every idea they attributed to Hisham; it is possible for the reader to refer to what I have said about Muqatil ibn Sulayman and Dawud al-Jawaribi, which are clear examples of what they said about Hisham.

I will be content here to clarify the points, which call upon us to refute an imputation like that, directed at Hisham. Hisham ibn al-Hakam was, it is said, in the beginning, a Jahmi, a follower of Jahm ibn Safwan (d.

128/745), and then renounced him after joining the Imam as-Sadiq, peace be upon him, and his error had been made clear to him.[^1] Jahm ibn Safwan, as is understood from his sect, was opposed to corporeality and anthropomorphism to the greatest extent; concerning the attributes of Allah, his school was a Mu‘tazilah school when it first emerged.

He was a contemporary of Wasil ibn ‘Ata’ and ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd, the two founders of the Mu‘tazilah, and they held nothing against him except the doctrine of the impermanence of Paradise and Hell and that felicity and chastisement were not eternal.