say, “Our only aim—in both knowledge and action—was to do good by following the course we have chosen and by reconciling the rational proofs with the revealed ones.”

[Sources of their specious doubts:]

Yet the bulk of these suspicions that they dignify as “proofs” are nothing but ideas they have blindly copied from the false deities of the idolaters or the Sabians, or from some of their heirs—whom we have been commanded to reject—such‐and‐such a figure and such‐and‐such a figure, or from anyone who happens to repeat their words because their hearts are alike. Allah says: “But no, by your Lord, they will not believe until they make you the judge in all matters of dispute among them; then they will find in themselves no discomfort concerning what you have decided, and they will submit in full submission” (an-Nisāʾ 65). He also says: “Mankind were one community; then Allah sent the prophets as bringers of glad tidings and as warners, and He sent down with them the Book in truth so that it might judge between people regarding that over which they differed. None differed over it except those who had been given it, after clear proofs had come to them, out of mutual envy; then Allah, by His permission, guided those who believed to the truth about which they had differed…” (al-Baqarah 213).

The necessary consequence of their claim is that the Book would no longer be a guidance for humanity, nor a clarification, nor a healing for what lies within the breasts, nor a light, nor the final point of reference when disputes arise. For it is self-evident that what these contrived sophists maintain—that the truth we are obliged to believe is not indicated by the Book and the Sunnah, either expressly or even apparently—can, at best, be wrung by a hair-splitting pedant from His statement: “and none is comparable to Him” (al-Ikhlāṣ 4).