and each one demolishes the words of the other. They are, as ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab and Imām Aḥmad put it, “at odds with the Book, acting against the Book, yet united in abandoning the Book.”

Others maintain that faith is to worship Allah according to the rulings of their own tastes, ecstatic feelings, and personal inclinations, without binding themselves to what the Messenger brought.

Still others take faith to be whatever they happened to find their fathers and forefathers practising, no matter what it was. Their belief rests on two premises: first, that this is what our ancestors said; second, that whatever they said is the truth.

Another group equates faith with noble character, courteous dealings, a cheerful face, thinking well of everyone, and leaving people to their heedlessness.

Yet others regard faith as stripping oneself of the world and its attachments, emptying the heart of them, and renouncing worldly life. When they meet a person like that, they rank him among the masters of faith—even if he is utterly bereft of faith in knowledge and in deed.

Higher than these are those who reduce faith to bare knowledge, even when no action accompanies it.

All these people have neither understood the reality of faith nor upheld it, nor has it taken hold of them.

They divide into types: some have defined faith as what in fact negates faith; some as what is irrelevant to faith; some as what is only a prerequisite and not sufficient for faith; some have required for its establishment conditions that contradict and oppose it; and some have imposed on it conditions that bear no relation to it at all.

True faith stands beyond all of this.