and innovation, or it turns him upside-down so that he takes innovation for Sunnah and Sunnah for innovation.

Such is the affliction of scholars who prefer the life of this world and chase after status and base desires.

These verses were revealed about them, down to His words: “And recite to them the account of the one to whom We gave Our signs, but he cast them off; so Satan pursued him and he became one of the deviant. Had We willed, We could have elevated him thereby, but he clung to the earth and followed his own desire. His likeness, therefore, is that of a dog: drive it away and it pants, or leave it alone and it still pants” (Al-Aʿraf 175–176).

That is the parable of the wicked scholar who acts in contradiction to what he knows.

Consider how many points of censure the verse contains:

1. He went astray after possessing knowledge, choosing disbelief over faith deliberately, not out of ignorance.

2. He parted with faith in a way that precludes his ever returning to it, for he slipped out of the revealed signs altogether just as a snake sheds its skin; had any remnant of those signs remained with him, he would not have slipped out of them.

3. Satan caught up with him and overtook him, seizing and mauling him. Hence the Almighty said, “so Satan pursued him,” rather than “followed him,” for the Arabic verb fa-atbaʿahu conveys catching and overtaking, a far stronger sense in both wording and meaning than merely “followed.”

4. He fell into deviation after having been rightly guided. Ghayy (deviation) is misguidance in knowledge and purpose, and is more specific to the corruption of intent and action, whereas ḍalāl (error) is more specific to the corruption of knowledge and belief. When either term stands alone it includes the other, but when they are mentioned together, this is the distinction.

5. The Almighty did not will to raise him through the knowledge he possessed; instead, that very knowledge became the cause of his destruction;