“So believe in Allah and His Messenger, the unlettered Prophet who himself believes in Allah and His words” (1).

He thereby distinguished faith in Him from faith in His words, as in His saying, “Say: We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us” (2), and in His saying, “All believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, and His messengers” (3).

The point is not that they (4) failed to find guidance on a matter such as this within so fundamental a principle (5)—one in which they knew neither iman nor the Quran, both of which are the light of Allah that He sent with His Messenger—just as He said: “You did not know what the Scripture was, nor what iman was; but We made it a light by which We guide whom We will of Our servants. And indeed you guide to a straight path (52), the path of Allah, to whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Surely, to Allah all matters return” (6).

Rather, the intent is that these scholars have openly declared that tasdiq is identical with knowledge, or else that it is conviction when it does not reach the level of knowledge, and that they are compelled to maintain this. This is even more emphatic than what some of them have said—that tasdiq merely entails knowledge—in full accord with what he cited from Abu’l-Qasim al-Isfarayini.

He also said (7): “Imam Abu Bakr ibn Fūrak reported from Abu’l-Hasan that he said: ‘Iman is the conviction of the truthfulness of the one who conveys information. Some of that conviction amounts to knowledge, and some does not. Thus iman in Allah is the conviction of His truthfulness, and it is only sound when one knows that He is truthful in what He conveys; and that is only the case when one knows that He—’”