[Those Who Distort and Reinterpret]

As for those who distort and reinterpret, they say: “The prophets intended by these statements only what is actually true, and what is actually true is what we have come to know through our reason.” They then strive to reinterpret these statements to accord with their own views, employing various interpretations that require them to depart from customary linguistic usage and resort to unusual figurative expressions and metaphors.

In most of what they reinterpret, the discerning among them may know with absolute certainty that the prophets did not intend the meanings they have imposed upon their words. These people often treat reinterpretation as a means of warding off a contrary argument. Their aim is to construe the wording as something a speaker could conceivably intend by it, not to discover the speaker’s intent and explain his words in terms that reveal that intent, following the means by which it can be known. An interpreter who does this is therefore lying about the person whose words he reinterprets. This is why most of them do not assert their interpretations with certainty.

Rather, they say: “Such-and-such a meaning may be intended.” Their case amounts to no more than the possibility that the wording could bear that meaning.

But as for whether the particular prophet could have intended that meaning by that wording, the opposite is usually the case: the context of the discourse and the speaker’s circumstances make it clear that he could not have intended that meaning in that particular statement.