Once they had convinced themselves that, in reality, no divine attributes exist, while conceding that the revelatory texts must nonetheless bear some meaning, they vacillated between two positions: affirming the wording while consigning the meaning—this they call “the way of the Salaf”—and diverting the wording toward contrived interpretations(1)—this they call “the way of the Khalaf.” Thus their falsehood became a compound of corrupted reason and disbelief in transmitted revelation: for the negation they relied on rational considerations they assumed to be self-evident proofs, when in fact they are no more than specious doubts(2); and with respect to revelation they distorted the words from their proper contexts(3).

When their entire enterprise rested on these two lying, unbelieving premises(4), the inevitable outcome was that they deemed the earliest generations(5) ignorant and dull-witted, imagining them to have been an unlettered folk(6) on a par with the well-meaning laity—people who had never plumbed the realities of knowledge of Allah, nor detected the subtleties(7) of divine science—while the virtuous Khalaf, so they claim, walked away with the prize in all of this.

If one reflects on this assertion(8), he will find it to be the height of ignorance, indeed the height of misguidance. How can these later comers—especially when by “Khalaf” one is referring to