Chapter Three (1)
Interpretation (taʼwīl) Is a Report about the Speaker’s Intent, Not a Fresh Act of Composition

This (2) is one of the matters in which many people fall into a grievous error. The goal is to grasp what the speaker intends by his words. Thus, when someone says, “The meaning of the expression is such-and-such,” he is in fact reporting what the speaker meant. If that report does not accord with the speaker’s intent, it is a lie about him.

The speaker’s intent can be known by several means:
• One: that he explicitly states he intends that very meaning.
• Two: that he employs a wording whose apparent sense is well-established in the language, with no indication accompanying the speech to show he meant otherwise. (3)

How much clearer, then, when the context surrounding his words indicates that he only meant the literal sense for which the wording was coined—such as His statement, “And Allah spoke to Moses directly” (Qur’an 4:163); or the Prophetic narration, “You will behold your Lord openly, just as you behold the sun at high noon (4) when no cloud obscures it” (5); and the ḥadīth, “Allah is happier over the repentance of His servant than one of you who loses his mount in a vast, deadly wilderness (6) upon which are his provisions…"