“They follow nothing but conjecture and the cravings of their own souls, even though guidance has already come to them from their Lord.” 1

This is why man was created carrying a portion of ignorance in the realm of knowledge and a portion of injustice in the realm of action: through his ignorance he follows speculation, and through his injustice he obeys his passions. When Allah sent His messengers and revealed His scriptures to guide and direct mankind, those who adhered most closely to the messengers became the farthest removed from those two flaws, just as He says: “Mankind was once a single community; then Allah sent the prophets as bearers of glad tidings and warners, and He sent down with them the Scripture in truth that it might judge between people concerning that over which they differed. None differed over it except those who had been given it, after clear proofs had come to them, out of mutual envy. So, by His leave, Allah guided those who believed to the truth about which they had differed. And Allah guides whom He wills to a straight path.” 2

For this reason, the description Allah has given of the human condition is not restricted to non-Muslims alone, nor to one faction of the Muslim community. Rather, non-Muslims are afflicted by it in the fundamentals of faith, where their ignorance and injustice amount to blatant unbelief and manifest loss. Accordingly, whoever introduces a major innovation in the foundations of the religion is struck by this malady more severely than one who errs in a subtle matter or commits a sin in it. Souls, after all, are ever eager to perceive their own merits and the faults of others.

The just scholar, however, speaks only the truth and follows nothing else. Hence, whoever embraces the sound reports transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ, his caliphs, his Companions, and the leading Imams of his Household—such as Imam ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, his son Imam Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bāqir, his son Imam Abū ʿAbdullāh Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq, the master scholar of the ummah—and likewise authorities like Anas ibn Mālik, Sufyān al-Thawrī and their peers, will find all of their teachings in perfect agreement regarding the fundamentals of the religion and the sum of its laws. Within those sources he will discover what occupies him and suffices him, freeing him from the diverse doctrines later authors devised that clash with the way of those early generations.