the Book or the Sunnah. At that point one (1) abandons adducing the Qur’an and the Sunnah as evidence against every false claimant, and nothing is left but the collision of opinions and the products of human cogitation—especially since the Jahmite has already conceded that most language is figurative, that verbal proofs do not yield certainty, and that whenever (2) reason appears to clash with revelation, reason must be preferred while the transmitted text is to be ignored and discarded. He will then either busy himself with re-interpreting the text—this is the method of the later scholars who lay claim to knowledge—or consign its meaning to Allah without employing it as evidence—this is the path of the sound, upright predecessors. After all that, how could any argument from the Book or the Sunnah still stand against a single heretic anywhere in the world?

For this very reason, opening the door of allegorical reinterpretation of the sacred texts necessarily entails demeaning them, casting aspersions upon them, stripping them of their authority, and handing power over to false opinions and corrupt doubts.

Indeed, we go further and say: the masters of reinterpretation can never establish, against any opponent, even a rational proof—an assertion more astonishing than the first. The explanation is that scriptural proofs are fully consonant with sound reason; authentic transmission can never be separated from clear intellect. Rather, the two are supportive brothers whom Allah has joined together and paired, for He, exalted be He, said (3): “We had established them in ways that We have not established you, and We granted them hearing, sight, and hearts. Yet their hearing, sight, and hearts availed them nothing when they rejected the signs of Allah; and there surrounded them that which they used to mock” (al-Ahqāf 25). Thus He mentioned the very faculties by which knowledge is acquired—hearing, sight, and the heart, which is the seat of reason.