among people of reason have agreed on this without prior coordination among themselves. This shows that it is what sound reason requires. By contrast, among the various groups of rational people, you find no one affirming opposing views except those who have coordinated their adherence to a doctrine received from one another. What people agree upon through coordination admits of error and falsehood in ways that agreement among rational people without coordination or mutual awareness does not. And Allah knows best.

[The Thirty-Second Argument]

It may be said that giving anything precedence over the prophetic texts—whether reason, spiritual unveiling, or anything else—entails that the words of Allah and His Messenger cannot be used as evidence in any matter of knowledge; that nothing reported by the Messenger can be believed on the grounds that he reported it; and that no guidance or knowledge of any reality can be gained from the reports of Allah and His Messenger. Indeed, this necessarily entails the absence of faith in Allah and His Messenger and encompasses disbelief, hypocrisy, heresy, and irreligion. Its falsity is known by necessity in the religion of Islam, just as the position itself is false and contradictory when judged by sound reason.

This consequence is inescapable for everyone who follows this path, as one finds upon encountering or examining it. This is because, if someone allows that what Allah and His Messenger have reported, and what the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, conveyed to his community in the Quran and hadith—including their accounts of the attributes of Allah Most High, the attributes of His angels and His Throne, Paradise and Hell, the prophets and their peoples, and everything else Allah has recounted in His Book or commanded concerning the affirmation of His oneness