and, through the same interpretive device, they declared pork lawful—despite knowing (1) that the Messiah was himself circumcised and expressly forbade the eating of swine. By interpretation they shifted the prescribed fast to the spring season and extended it until it reached fifty days. By interpretation they came to worship the cross and icons, and by interpretation they severed themselves from the rulings of the Torah and the Gospel.
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One of the gravest calamities and crimes of figurative interpretation is that, once it is unleashed upon the foundations of faith and Islam, it uproots them completely. The foundations of faith are five (2): belief in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day; and the foundations of Islam are five: the testimony of faith, establishing the prayer, giving the zakat, fasting Ramadan, and making pilgrimage to the Sacred House. Then they set about