[The Twenty-Seventh Argument]

We say:

Those who oppose the words of Allah and His Messenger with their own reason, if they are among the heretical philosophers and Qarmatians, claim that the messengers concealed the opposite of what they publicly proclaimed, for the sake of the public interest. This ultimately leads them to abolish religious obligations and declare forbidden things lawful—either for the general public or for the elite alone—and to similar positions which every believer knows are false and contrary to what is necessarily known of Islam.

If, however, they are among the scholars of jurisprudence, speculative theology, and Sufism who do not make that claim, they must resort to reinterpretation: diverting an expression from its more likely meaning to a less likely meaning.

The term ta’wīl (interpretation) can mean explanation, as in the writings of Quran commentators such as Ibn Jarīr and others. It can also mean the reality to which the discourse ultimately refers; this is the meaning of ta’wīl in the Quran.

In this second sense, some of it is known only to Allah. This is why they affirmed knowledge of the meanings of the Quran while denying knowledge of the manner, as in the statement of Mālik and others:

“Istiwā’ is known, but its manner is unknown.”