The fourth fault is their tampering with the texts and their violation of the texts’ sanctity. If you could but see them⦗1⦘ as they chew those texts with their mouths—calamities having already befallen them, tossed about by the surging waves of reinterpretation⦗2⦘, hurled to and fro by the gusts of opinion⦗3⦘, hemmed in by the spears of capricious desire! The champions of figurative interpretation cry them out for auction in the marketplace of “Who will bid higher?”, each one paying for them with whatever construction he pleases. Were you to witness those texts among them, snatched away by the hands of conjecture, then shackled—after once being unfettered—by every sort of objection, banished from the realm of certainty and placed under the rule of the ignorant interpreters!

All the while, snares of impious deviation⦗4⦘ have long been set for them; they remain exposed to the darts of vilification⦗5⦘ and corruption. The deniers sit in ambush on their straight path, pushing them away front and back, saying, “You have no way against us; and if we must accept you at all, then only as metaphor!” “We,” they claim, “are the people of rational inquiry and the masters of demonstrative proofs, whereas you are but verbal indicators and audible externals that grant neither knowledge nor certainty. Your chain of transmission⦗6⦘ consists of solitary reports (aḥād), ever open to censure of their transmitters; and even if it were authentic and mass-transmitted, understanding⦗7⦘ the intent of the Speaker would still depend on the removal of ten separate contingencies⦗8⦘.”