—some of them. So is the repudiation of the transmitted and widely circulated reports anything other than the very thing you have described in that passage?

Fourth: He says that they affirm what they affirm concerning the Hereafter.

It may be said to them: They affirm it only in the most general terms—an affirmation in which even the simplest layperson joins them. As for the details, they cannot answer even the most elementary questioner, nor do their books contain the hadiths in which the Prophet ﷺ described these matters. For this reason you find them among the people least versed in such subjects, or else doubtful about them, or even outright deniers. What kind of veneration is that? What distinction of this sort (1)(2) do they possess over the average layperson, or even those beneath that level? In fact, many ordinary believers have faith in the particulars (3) of these issues and know (4) from them what (5) the Lawgiver has reported—matters nowhere mentioned in these people’s fundamentals. True merit over the general body of believers is attained only when an individual or a group possesses a body of knowledge (6) not found among the masses, and nothing he listed among those fundamentals meets that standard.

Fifth: Their proof (7) is that they deny intrinsic rational good and evil, holding that the rulings of deeds are received only from the sharia (8) [and they claim that this demonstrates their exaltation of the sharia] (9) and their obedience to it, and that they never swerve from it—thereby establishing, so they say, their adherence to the sunnah.