that leads them to knowledge of the truth, without the messenger providing them with any evidence pointing to the truth or explaining it to them at all through his words. In their view, this is like someone who sends guides with the pilgrims to show them the road to Mecca, but instructs the guides to address them in terms that direct them to a different road. Their words would then prompt the pilgrims to reflect and reason until they discover the road to Mecca through their own reflection, rather than through those guides. They would then reject what they had understood from the guides’ words and strive to deny what those words indicate and invalidate their meaning and implications.

If this is the case, it is clear that many people will follow only the guides, who claim to know the road better than they do, to have been entrusted by those in authority with guiding the pilgrims or showing them the way, and to bear responsibility for doing so. Thus, they follow the guides.

As for the group who supposed that the guides did not intend their words to direct them, convey understanding, or guide them to the right path, each began to reason through his own reflection and effort. They disagreed over the routes and scattered. Some took roads other than the road to Mecca, which led them into deadly valleys, fatal deserts, and land with branching paths—and they perished there.

Another group fell into doubt and bewilderment. They neither travelled with the guides to reach their destination nor took and followed the routes of those who opposed the guides. Instead, they remained where they were, lost and bewildered, until they too died of hunger and thirst where they stood, as did