anyone from the early generations who ever said such a thing. Some later figures may have voiced it—just as a few of the recent scholars even allow a person to perform istinjāʾ (ritual cleansing after defecation) with every copy of the Torah and Gospel that exists in the world. Statements of this sort have nothing to do with the positions of the first generations of this community or its leading imams. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—may Allah be pleased with him—when he saw a copy of the Torah in the hand of Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, said to him, “Kaʿb, if you are certain that this is the very Torah that Allah revealed to Moses son of ʿImrān, then read it.” Thus he made the matter contingent upon that certainty.