Chapter Fifteen (1)
On the Crimes of Reinterpretation (taʾwīl) against the Religions of the Messengers, and how the ruin of the world and the corruption of both worldly life and faith result from opening the door to it.

When a reflective observer contemplates the decadence of the world, the division (2) and discord that have overtaken it, and the plight to which the Muslims have been driven, he will find that it all springs from the divergent reinterpretations applied to the verses of the Quran and to the reports of the Messenger—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him. Disputants of every stripe have fastened upon those texts, in both the fundamentals and the ancillary rulings of the religion, and their reinterpretations have produced ever-widening dissension and warfare, the shattering of unity, the dispersion (3) of passions, the rupture of cohesion, the snapping of bonds, and the corruption of mutual relations. So much so that some now declare others unbelievers and hurl curses at them; you see factions among them shedding the blood of their fellow Muslims and deeming it lawful—in (4) respect of their lives, their sanctities, and their wealth—more than the inhabitants of the realm of war could ever threaten them with.

The calamities that the proponents of these corrupt reinterpretations have wrought—and continue (5) to wreak at every moment—upon the faith and the community are too many to be numbered, too vast for any describer to encompass, and too extensive for any chronicler to record. In short, they are the root of every corruption and tribulation, the foundation of every