—namely some simpletons who have failed to appreciate the rank of the Salaf and, indeed, have not truly known Allah, His Messenger, or the believers as they were commanded to know them—claiming that the way of the Salaf is safer, while the way of the Khalaf is more knowledgeable and more judicious.

These innovators who prefer the path (1) of the Khalaf (2) over that of the Salaf went astray only because they imagined that the Salaf’s method was nothing more than assenting to the wording of the Qur’an and the hadith without understanding them—just like the unlettered folk about whom Allah says, “And among them are unlettered people who know nothing of the Scripture except wishful fancies” (al-Baqarah 2:78) [ق 29]. They further supposed that the way of the Khalaf is to extract meanings from the texts after wrenching them from their realities by means of every sort of figurative usage and exotic turn of language.

This corrupt notion produced that statement whose essence is to cast Islam behind one’s back. They lied about the way of the Salaf and went astray in vindicating the way of the Khalaf, thus combining ignorance of the Salafic path—through their falsehood concerning it—with ignorance and misguidance in endorsing the path of the Khalaf.

The root cause is their belief that, in reality, Allah (3) possesses no attribute indicated by these texts—a belief born of the same spurious doubts that they share (4) with their brethren among the disbelievers.