How closely these self-styled sophists resemble the people described by Allah: “Have you not considered those who claim to believe in what has been sent down to you and in what was sent down before you, yet they wish to seek judgment from the false deity, though they were commanded to reject it? Satan only wants to lead them far astray. When it is said to them, ‘Come to what Allah has revealed and to the Messenger,’ you see the hypocrites turning away from you completely. But how will it be when a calamity befalls them because of what their own hands have sent ahead, then they come to you swearing by Allah, ‘We intended nothing but good conduct and conciliation’?” (an-Nisāʾ 60–62).

For such people, whenever they are summoned to what Allah has revealed in the Book and to the Messenger—after his death this means to his Sunnah—they turn away from it, and they