that rational proof which conflicts with the scriptural proof, that He is misleading.”

He said:

“It follows from what we have mentioned that transmitted proofs cannot be relied upon in questions of knowledge. Perhaps this question can be answered by the same response given to the possibility of miracles appearing at the hands of liars. They may, however, be relied upon in questions based on transmission: sometimes to yield certainty, as in the questions of consensus and solitary reports, and sometimes to yield probability, as in religious legal rulings.”

I say: Let the discerning believer reflect on these words, although he may have moderated his position somewhat here. He attributes their failure to yield certainty solely to the possibility of a conflicting rational proof, since their yielding certainty depends on premises that are only probable: the transmission of vocabulary, grammar and morphology; the absence of figurative usage, lexical ambiguity, transferred meanings, ellipsis and restriction of general wording; and the absence of a conflicting scriptural proof as well as a rational one.

On this basis, al-Āmidī and others rejected reliance on scriptural proofs in this matter. We have discussed this at length elsewhere, demonstrated that scriptural proofs can yield certainty, and exposed the invalidity of what was put forward by these men who laid the foundations of heresy.