people and punish them for abandoning any statement he deems correct; and this is something upon which the Muslims are unanimously agreed.

This becomes clear through:

Eighth Consideration:

The belief that is obligatory for all believers—scholars and laypeople alike—and for whose abandonment one deserves punishment is only that which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, clarified, proclaimed, and commanded us to affirm. The fundamentals of faith that every morally responsible person must hold, the doctrines that distinguish the people of Paradise from the people of Hell, the blessed from the wretched, are among the greatest matters the Messenger was charged with explaining and conveying. Their ruling is not like that of isolated (1) incidents that did not arise in his lifetime and about which discussion later spread through personal reasoning. Rather, (3) belief regarding the established, transmitted matters of religion—whose rulings do not admit renewal (2)—such as the affirmation and negation of the names and attributes of Allah, is not something for which a new cause of knowledge or obligation can suddenly emerge. Knowledge of these matters and the duty to affirm them are shared by both the earliest and the later generations, with the earliest being more entitled to them than those who came after, because of their closeness to the fountainhead of guidance and the lamp of divine light. The people most worthy of guidance are those whom the Messenger addressed directly—his select Companions and the generality among them—and these foundational doctrines are among the greatest forms of guidance, so they are most entitled to them.

Therefore, when no obligation for such a belief is found in what the Messenger brought in the Book and the sunnah, nor in what the predecessors of the ummah unanimously upheld, its non-obligation is known (4) with certain, categorical knowledge (5); at best it can only be regarded as a view reached through individual reasoning.

Accordingly, we say: Indeed, these