between them (1)! We do not deny that our resort to figurative interpretation is greater and more far-reaching than theirs; yet we merely found a door standing open and walked through it, a well-trodden path and followed it. If taʾwīl (figurative interpretation) is true, we are the people most richly blessed by it; and if it is false, then you and we share in it alike—some dabbling, others plunging headlong! Such is one of the baleful consequences that the crime of taʾwīl has visited upon the very foundations of faith and Islam.

It has even been said that Iblīs was expelled and cursed on account of taʾwīl: he opposed the explicit text with analogy, preferred the latter, and interpreted for himself that this rational analogy should override the textual command to prostrate (2). He said, “I am better than he” (Q 7:11) (3). His argument, however, lacked one of its two premises—namely, that the superior does not humble himself before the inferior—and he suppressed that premise as though it were self-evident (4). He set forth the first premise by saying, “You created me from fire while You created him from clay” (Q 7:11); and from those two premises he concluded that he should refuse to prostrate. He imagined that this rational sophistry would avail him in his interpretation—yet what befell him befell him, and he became the leader of all who, until the Day of Resurrection, oppose the texts of revelation with their false taʾwīl. There is no deity but Allah—how many followers this accursed leader has gathered from among all peoples!

If you examine most of the specious objections advanced by the interpreters—because of which they twist the texts and strip them of their meanings—you will find them cut from the same cloth as his. And the one who says, “When reason and transmitted revelation are at odds, we give precedence to…"