They say to the gullible victim, “Weigh these people against those; exercise your reason and examine the ultimate outcome of truth and falsehood.” By means of that deception they secure what armies could never secure and what no one would even hope to reach by any other avenue (1).

Among the greatest crimes that re-interpretation commits against the religion and its adherents—indeed, among its most devastating blows—is that the re-interpreter finds an open gateway to his objective of scattering the unity of the believers and unravelling their order, and an easy road that leads straight to it. He carves out a space for himself among the Muslims by sharing with them acknowledgment of the root of revelation, then affiliates himself with the ranks of the “people of interpretation”; after that he is free to say whatever he pleases and to claim whatever he desires (2). No one can prevent him from doing so (3), for he contends that the foundation of revelation is common property between you and him, and that virtually every faction that affirms it (4) has fashioned for itself an interpretation to which it adheres (5). Accordingly, he produces an interpretation comparable to theirs and says, “You have no right to advance an interpretive position unless I am equally entitled to mine. What has permitted it for you yet forbidden it to me, when both you and I acknowledge the root of revelation and agree that interpretation is permissible (6)? Why should your interpretation—despite its contradiction of the text’s plain sense—be acceptable, while mine is prohibited?” His appeal to this claim is the most cunning stratagem he employs and the most lethal weapon with which he fights.

These afflictions—and many more besides—have been visited upon the communities of faith at the hands of such interpreters (7); indeed, it was re-interpretation that split the Jews into one—