and the path of the earliest generations. No legal ruling may ever be established—whether by explicit text or by deduction—without these three foundations.

The objections raised here can be answered in two ways: a general reply and a detailed one.

The general reply

It is a refutation by counter-example. The Jews and the Christians possess countless stories and analogies of the same type, and even the idol-worshippers to whom the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—was sent used to supplicate at their idols and were sometimes answered, just as these people are sometimes answered. In our own day, a group of Christians claim the very same things. If such reports alone were proof that Allah approves of and loves the practice, then the argument must be applied consistently—and that would lead to blatant, self-contradictory disbelief.

Moreover, you will find that many of those who seek deliverance—whether at a grave or elsewhere—have each adopted an idol in which he places his good opinion, while harboring a bad opinion of another. Every one of them claims that his idol answers, whereas the idols of others do not. It is impossible for them all to be correct; preferring some over others is arbitrary, a judgment without evidence, and embracing all their religions at once would be to combine opposites.

For most of these people, the influence they claim to experience is—by their own admission—proportional to the intensity of their focus on their chosen idol and their turning away from others. Their only point of agreement—setting aside what they mutually deny—is that the perceived effect weakens whenever a single petitioner entertains hope of being answered by more than one source; for if a person expects his plea to be answered by this idol and that one alike, his experience is not like that of the devotee whose confidence is confined to a single idol.