[The Twenty-Eighth Argument]

It may be stated as follows:

The position of those who allow divine and prophetic texts to be countered by conflicting human opinions, and who hold that neither the Quran nor hadith may be used as evidence in any matter of knowledge—indeed, that nothing reported by Allah and His Messenger can provide grounds for belief—really amounts to this: if what Allah and His Messenger have reported in the Book and Sunnah may include reports contradicted by clear reason, and reason must be given precedence over them, without Allah and His Messenger explaining either the truth that accords with what reason indicates or the meanings of those reports that contradict clear reason, then a person can only be in one of two situations.

For when a person hears Allah and His Messenger’s discourse concerning the unseen, we must suppose either that he holds an opinion contrary to the text or that he holds no such opinion. If he possesses something he calls a rational conclusion that contradicts what Allah and His Messenger have reported, and his rational conclusion is to take precedence, he will give it precedence and disregard their report. Thus, everyone whose reason requires him to contradict something reported by Allah and His Messenger would give his reason precedence over their report.

He would not be using what Allah and His Messenger have reported as evidence for the truth of its content. Indeed, he would derive no knowledge from their report at all. At most, he would gain only the burden of straining his mind over meanings that the wording might bear, but which the discourse indicates only remotely, in order to construe the wording in those senses.