Question:
May Allah reward you well. The questioner asks: Are the Jahmiyyah limited to three tiers, as mentioned by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah regarding the extremist Jahmiyyah, the Mu’tazilah, and the Ash’aris, or are there other sects that branch off from them?
Answer:
According to Shaykh al-Islam [Ibn Taymiyyah], the Jahmiyyah are in three tiers: the Jahmiyyah of the Ash’aris, the Jahmiyyah of the Mu’tazilah, and the pure (purely absolute) Jahmiyyah.
The Ash’aris are Jahmiyyah and the Mu’tazilah are Jahmiyyah because they contain a type of Tajham (Jahmi-leaning theology). Tajham means adopting the doctrine of Jahm, which is the negation of the Divine attributes.
Thus, the Mu’tazilah have Tajham because they negated the attributes while affirming the divine names. The Ash’aris have Tajham because they affirmed the seven [rational] attributes while negating the rest of the attributes, though they affirmed the names.
The pure Jahmiyyah negated both the attributes and the names.
It is these latter ones whom the scholars and Imams declared as disbelievers, to the extent that Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak said: “They are not [even] among the seventy-two sects; they are outside the seventy-two sects.”
Five hundred scholars declared them to be disbelievers, as Ibn al-Qayyim mentioned.
As for the Mu’tazilah, some scholars declared them disbelievers while others considered them “innovators” (mubtadi’ah), with the majority viewing them as innovators, though some scholars did declare them disbelievers.
As for the Ash’aris, they are innovators.