And these later figures1—whether they set themselves up as enemies of the Prophet’s Household (Ahl al-Bayt), deprive them of their rights and cause them harm, or whether they go to unwarranted extremes concerning them, fabricate lies about them, and in the process short-change the early forerunners and the obedient—will see within the legacy transmitted from those first generations, in the chapter of monotheism and the divine attributes, the chapter of justice and predestination, the chapter on faith, its names and rulings, the chapter of threat, reward and punishment, and the chapter of commanding right and forbidding wrong—together with the rulings that pertain to rulers, whether upright or wicked, the duties of their subjects toward them, and the discussions about the Companions and the Prophet’s kin—material that makes it plain to every fair-minded person that the Salaf named above differed in these matters over nothing more than the sort of disagreement the Book and the Sunnah countenanced, as already noted. It likewise shows that the grave innovations which contradict the Qur’an, the Sunnah and the consensus of the rightly guided authorities only arose among later generations, who then attributed some of them to certain predecessors, at times on the strength of unsound reports and at times by misinterpreting ambiguous statements of theirs.

Yet, by Allah’s mercy, it is rare for anything of that kind to be attributed to them without the sound, well-established transmissions also containing clear and decisive statements that expose the error of those who slipped in their reporting or their interpretation. The Straight Path within every community is like the king’s highway: the perfection of Islam lies in occupying the middle ground in matters of religion and governance, as the Most High says, “Thus We have made you a middle nation” 2.

Accordingly, they never deviated as the Jews, the Christians or the Sabians did. In the same way, the people of rectitude who adhere to the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and to what the Salaf were upon have clung to this middle course, never swerving into unrestrained excess.

The Jews, for instance, were harsh toward the prophets and the truthful saints, to the point that they killed them and branded them liars, as Allah the Exalted says: