or a polemical trickster, even though the Prophet ﷺ forbade contrived, convoluted questions in matters of law (1).

In spite of that prohibition, this merchandise still passed among the mute and muddle-headed, circulating like counterfeit coin in the hands of naïve beginners. Some inexperienced foreigners were taken in as well, until they imagined that it ranked within the sciences as the necessary does in relation to what it necessitates. They never suspected that this method and the kind of knowledge that draws one near to Allah (2) are mutually opposed and incompatible, just as it and compounded ignorance are intimate companions and close brothers (3).

When it finally dawned on a few of them that such discourse yields no real substance—neither establishing truth nor invalidating falsehood—they set about unmasking its riddles and unlocking its closed doors, laying bare its causes, exposing its slips, and demonstrating its flaws and fractures (4). Their aim was to make plain (5) that whoever embarks upon it in debate pursues the path of obstinate contention (ladd), turns away from the avenues (6) of guidance and rectitude, clings to the loose ends of legal theory that lead to no genuine insight, and borrows from sound dialectic only its outward trappings with which he hoodwinks practitioners of the discipline.

Yet for all that, their discourse cannot help but contain certain sound principles and occasional points of