Another group says: “Only Allah knows this interpretation.”

Some of these say: “The texts are to be taken according to their apparent meanings,” and they argue against such interpretations in every possible way.

It is well known that if these texts have an interpretation contrary to their apparent meaning, they cannot be taken in their apparent sense. Whatever is taken in its apparent sense has no interpretation contrary to that sense, let alone one said to be known by Allah or anyone else.

Rather, concerning an interpretation of this kind, one should say what Allah Most High says:

“Say, ‘Do you inform Allah of something He does not know in the heavens or on the earth?’” [Yūnus: 18]

For if something is nonexistent and has no reality, Allah knows it only as nonexistent and having no reality; He does not know it as something real and existent.

The reason for this confusion is that the term “interpretation,” as used by these disputants, does not have the meaning it has in revelation, nor even the meaning it had among the early commentators on the Quran. For them, “interpretation” meant explanation of the text. Interpretation in this sense is known to those who know the explanation of the Quran.

Thus Mujāhid, who was a leading authority in Quranic exegesis and had asked Ibn ‘Abbās—may Allah be pleased with him and his father—about the explanation of the entire Quran, which Ibn ‘Abbās then explained to him, used to say: “Those firmly grounded in knowledge know its interpretation”—meaning the explanation just mentioned.

This is what Ibn Qutaybah and others like him meant when they said that