and the Jahmiyyah, for they have followed, in distorting the texts that speak of the divine attributes(1) the very path taken by their Jewish predecessors. When they proved unable to tamper with the wording of the Qurʾanic passages, they tampered with their meanings, laid claim to them, and flung wide the gate of taʾwīl to every heretic bent on assaulting the religion. Such a person comes along to find an open door and a beaten track; those before him are in no position to push him out of a gate or turn him back from a road in which they themselves have walked. True, the heretic may have broadened a gate they first unlatched and widened a path they(2) originally hewed out; yet they are like two men entrusted with a sum of money: one stretches the meaning of the trust and, by interpretation, eats a single dinar, whereupon the other stretches it further and eats ten. When the first objects,(3) the second replies, “If eating one dinar is lawful by interpretation,(4) then eating ten is likewise lawful by it.” This is all the more persuasive when the eater of the single dinar claims that the one who entrusted him actually wanted him to resort to interpretation, and that the interpreter understands the entruster’s intention better than the one who withheld the money; so his companion answers, “Then I have a greater claim and a better right to eat this wealth.”
The point is that taʾwīl is pulled between two foundations: tafsīr and taḥrīf. Taʾwīl that functions as tafsīr is the truth, whereas taʾwīl that constitutes taḥrīf is falsehood.
Taʾwīl of the distorting sort belongs to the same category as ilḥād, for it is the diversion of the texts from what they actually denote—either by impugning them or by stripping them of their real meanings while still acknowledging their wording. Likewise, ilḥād with respect to the divine names may at times consist of denying their meanings and realities, at other times of denying the One named by them, and at yet other times of associating others with Him in those names. Hence, the false form of taʾwīl is