The esoteric Bāṭiniyyah, in pursuit of corrupt aims by which they deceive the people and lure them to their false creeds, force the Qur’an to agree with their own opinions and sectarian doctrines, applying its verses to matters they know with absolute certainty were never intended. Such practices constitute the first ground on which interpreting the Qur’an by mere opinion is forbidden.

The second ground is a person’s rushing to explain the Qur’an solely on the basis of its outward Arabic wording, without relying on transmitted reports concerning the Qur’an’s rarities, its ambiguous or substituted expressions, its ellipses, omissions, implied pronouns, inversions, and reorderings. Whoever has not mastered the outward dimension of tafsīr yet hastens to extract meanings on the strength of nothing but his command of Arabic will commit many errors and will enter the ranks of those who interpret the Qur’an by conjecture. Transmission and hearing are indispensable at the outset, for they protect one from error; only thereafter may understanding and deduction broaden. The unusual expressions that can be grasped only through transmitted knowledge are many, and no one can hope to reach the inner sense before perfecting the outward.

Do you not see the Almighty’s words, “And We gave Thamūd the she-camel as a visible sign, but they wronged themselves on account of her” (Q 17:59)? The intended meaning is: We granted them a manifest sign, yet they wronged themselves by killing her. Someone who looks only at the surface of the Arabic will imagine that the verse is saying the she-camel could see, and he will have no idea in what respect they wronged, supposing that they oppressed someone else as well as themselves. This is an instance of ellipsis and implied wording, and such examples abound in the Qur’an. Apart from these two cases, the prohibition does not apply. Allah knows best.

Ibn ʿAṭiyya said: “A number of the eminent righteous predecessors—such as Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī, and others—held Qur’anic exegesis in great veneration and nonetheless refrained from it out of piety and self-scrutiny, despite their knowledge and seniority.”

Abu Bakr al-Anbārī said: “The leading imams of the early generations used to shrink from interpreting the difficult passages of the Qur’an. Some feared that their explanation might not accord with what Allah, Mighty and Majestic, intended, so they withheld speech; others dreaded becoming authorities in tafsīr whose opinions would be adopted and whose paths would be followed. A later person might then interpret a single word on the basis of his own opinion, err, and say, ‘My imam in Qur’anic exegesis—may Allah be pleased with him—said concerning the interpretation of one word of the Qur’an: Which heaven will shade me, which earth will carry me, where shall I flee, what shall I do, if I speak about a word from Allah’s Book with other than what the Blessed and Exalted intended?’”