He then noted that, when the reply reached certain regions, an uproar arose among the practitioners of those innovations. Fearing that their method would vanish and the livelihood they derived from it would cease, they clung to a few fatwas issued by contemporary shaykhs, twisting them to serve their own purposes. Al-Shātibī refuted them and demonstrated that those very opinions were, in fact, evidence against them.
He expanded on this point at great length—roughly thirty pages, 358–388—so whoever wishes a fuller treatment should refer to that section.
Before this discussion, he had outlined the principles and sources upon which the people of innovation and caprice rely, and he decisively showed their invalidity and their contradiction of the Sacred Law. Because of their importance, and because the scholars of uṣūl have not treated them extensively—as he himself remarked, 1/297—I have decided to present readers with a concise summary of them. Look for it in footnote 1.
(2) 1. Their reliance on weak reports and even those fabricated against the Messenger of Allah; a weak hadith carries no strong presumption that the Prophet actually uttered it, so no legal ruling can be grounded upon it—what, then, of reports that are openly acknowledged as forgeries! (pp. 299–300). 2. Their rejection of authentic hadiths that do not serve their purposes, claiming such texts contradict reason—just as some deny the punishment of the grave, the sirat (the bridge over Hellfire), the mizan (the balance for deeds), the beatific vision of Allah in the Hereafter, and the like (p. 309). 3. Their audacity in discoursing on the Quran and the sunnah, both in Arabic, while ignorant of the Arabic linguistic sciences through which one understands Allah and His Messenger, thereby attributing to the Sharia what it does not contain and opposing those firmly grounded in knowledge. 4. (p. 320) Their deviation from clear, well-established principles to the pursuit of ambiguous passages about which reason itself is at a loss.