all of this, without distinguishing between one report and another. Rather, the evidence establishing his truthfulness entails the truth of everything he has reported.

If that evidence is rational, then this rational evidence precludes accepting some of his reports as true but not others. Whoever affirms some of what the Messenger has reported but not the rest has invalidated the rational evidence establishing the Messenger’s truthfulness and has invalidated revelation. He is thus left with neither reason nor revelation.

Such is the condition of one who believes in part of the Book but not the rest. Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, those who disbelieve in Allah and His messengers and wish to make a distinction between Allah and His messengers, saying, ‘We believe in some and disbelieve in others,’ and wish to adopt a way in between— * those are truly the disbelievers. And We have prepared for the disbelievers a humiliating punishment.”
[al-Nisā’: 150–151]

There is no doubt that whoever gives precedence over the words of Allah and His Messenger to anything that opposes them, whether a rational argument or something else, and abandons the belief in them that is incumbent upon him while believing what contradicts them, has believed in part and disbelieved in part.

This is the true condition of the adherents of religious innovation, as described in Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s Refutation of the Heretics and the Jahmiyyah and by others:

“They differ over the Book, oppose the Book, and agree in opposing the Book.”

His statement, “They differ over the Book,” encompasses the blameworthy disagreement