—and whoever does not submit to his judgment, feeling no unease about it, is no believer (1). Could it be imagined that he would then inform the umma about Allah, His Names, and His Attributes in such terms that the truth lay in opposing their outward sense; that guidance consisted in stripping them of their realities, forcing them into barbarous expressions and repugnant flights of interpretation; that taking them at face value amounted to misguidance, anthropomorphism, and heresy, while guidance and knowledge resided only in their figurative readings and in divesting them of their literal sense, consigning the umma in all of this to the opinions of the bewildered and the reasonings of the reckless (2)(3)?

Would he have said: ‘Whenever I tell you something about Allah and His exalted attributes, do not believe its apparent reality; rather, seek to know what I intended by consulting the opinions and rational deliberations of men, for guidance and knowledge are to be found there’?

Once the religion is handed over (4) to the allegorical constructions of interpreters, every one of its bonds unravels. There is no faction among the sects of misguidance that wishes to bend the texts to its doctrine without finding a way to do so. They will say to the one who opened for them the gate of interpretation: ‘We have interpreted just as you have interpreted; the texts speak of what we have understood just as they speak of what you have understood. Why, then, are you rewarded for your interpretation while we are blamed for ours (5)?’ And the very factor that drove you to such interpretation—