The jurist Ghānim al-Mūshīlī (1) said: “I heard Imām Abū al-Maʿālī declare, ‘Had I been able, at the beginning of my career, to foresee what I now know, I would never have occupied myself with kalām (dialectical theology).’

Abū al-Maʿālī states in al-Risālah al-Niẓāmiyyah (2): “The scholars have trodden different paths concerning the ostensible texts that occur in the Quran and the Sunnah, while their inner purport has remained beyond the reach of the people of truth (3). Some adopted figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) and applied it to the Quran and to whatever hadiths are sound. The leading authorities among the early generations, however, refrained from interpretation, let the texts stand upon their apparent wording, and consigned the knowledge of their realities to the Lord Most High.

The view we endorse intellectually and affirm before Allah as a matter of creed is to follow the salaf of the community; thus, following them is paramount (4). The decisive textual proof is that the consensus of the ummah is a binding authority and the buttress of most of the Sacred Law. The Companions of the Messenger — may Allah bless him and grant him peace — were the elite of Islam, shouldering the burdens of the Sharia. They never concerned themselves with probing these meanings or uncovering what lay within them, even while exerting every effort to preserve the foundations of the religion, exhort one another to safeguard it, and teach people what they needed from it. Had interpreting such passages been permissible or obligatory, their attention to it would surely have surpassed their attention to the ancillary rulings of the Law. Since their age and that of the Successors elapsed with them abstaining from interpretation, that stands as conclusive evidence that this is the path to be followed. Hence, it is incumbent on every believer to hold that the Creator is exalted above the attributes of contingent beings, not to delve into the interpretation of problematic texts, and to entrust their meaning to—