And on this assumption, every heretic and innovator will say:

“In reality, the truth is what I have come to know through my own judgment and reason. Nothing in the scriptural texts contradicts it, because those texts are difficult and ambiguous, and no one knows their meaning. What no one knows the meaning of cannot be used as evidence.”

This position thus closes off the path to guidance and clarification through the prophets, while opening the way for those who oppose them and say:

“Guidance and clarification are found in our path, not in the path of the prophets, for we know what we say and explain it through rational proofs. The prophets did not know what they were saying, let alone explain what they intended.”

It is therefore clear that the position of those who leave the meanings to Allah, claiming to follow the Sunnah and the early generations, is among the worst positions held by the people of innovation and heresy.

If it is said:

“You know that many of the early generations held that the pause in recitation should come after His words:

‘No one knows its interpretation except Allah.’
[Āl ‘Imrān: 6]

Indeed, many people say that this is the position of the early generations. They have transmitted this position from Ubayy ibn Ka'b, Ibn Mas'ūd, 'Ā'ishah, Ibn 'Abbās, 'Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, and numerous others among the early and later generations. Although the other position—that the early generations knew its interpretation—has also been transmitted from Ibn 'Abbās and is the position of Mujāhid, Muhammad ibn Ja'far, Ibn Ishāq, Ibn Qutaybah, and others, what you have said impugns those early scholars and their followers.”