Anyone knowledgeable about this subject knows that the early generations’ discussions of these foundational matters—such as Allah’s being on high, affirming the divine attributes known through revelation, and other such matters—are many times more extensive than their discussions of inheritance involving a grandfather and siblings, divorce, zihār, oaths to abstain from marital relations, dry ablution for someone in a state of major ritual impurity, touching a copy of the Quran while ritually impure, prostration for forgetfulness, matters of faith, vows, inheritance shares, and other subjects transmitted from them through numerous independent channels.

We have explained this principle at length elsewhere, including in our discussion of the mass transmission of accounts of the Messenger’s miracles—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and other matters requiring an understanding of this principle: reports may be mass-transmitted among specialists in a subject but not among others.

Scholars of hadith are the most knowledgeable about what the Messenger brought and about the statements of the Companions and those who followed them in righteousness. They are therefore the authorities to whom one should refer in this field, not someone entirely unfamiliar with it, who has no knowledge of these matters. Were it not for his following one of the imams in jurisprudence, he would be no different, in matters of religious law, from any ignorant layperson.

It may be objected:

“You have said that most leading deniers among the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah had little knowledge of what has been transmitted from the Messenger, of the early generations’ statements concerning Quranic interpretation and the foundations of religion, and of what they conveyed from the Messenger. Yet many of the deniers are knowledgeable about these matters.”

The answer is:

These people fall into several categories. One category has no expertise in rational argumentation. Rather, they accept what the deniers say concerning conclusions and evidence, believing these to be conclusive proofs, although they lack the ability to pursue such arguments independently. In reality, they are merely followers in these matters. These people have adopted the views of the early generations, so whatever they hear from the Quran and hadith