The letter of Abu Hanifah to Uthman al-Batti(after being called Mur'jii')
The Epistle of Abū Hanifa to ‘Uthmān al-Battī[1] From Abū Ḥanīfa to ‘Uthmān al-Battī. Peace be unto you. I extol to you God, than whom there is no other god. As for what follows, I counsel the fear of God and obedience to Him; God suffices as reckoner and compensator. Your letter has reached me, and I have understood your advice in it. You say that you were moved to write it by what I had written to preserve you in the good and to advise you. You mention that it has reached you that I am of the Murji’a[2], and that I hold a True Believer may err, and that this distresses you, and that there is really no excuse among friends of God for a thing which keeps one apart from God ; that there is nothing by which one may be guided in what mere men create and innovate; t hat moral imperatives ( al-amr ) are only in what the Qur’ān brought and in what Muhammad , on whom be peace and God's blessing, preached and his Companions agreed upon until the people became divided; and that anythi...