and leave aside what they do not understand. Do you want Allah and His Messenger to be disbelieved?” As for truthful, beneficial discourse, it is praiseworthy, not blameworthy.

Al-Khattābī said:

“The Quran and Sunnah do not explicitly and individually explain everything people need. We therefore needed to derive rulings for new circumstances implicit in their terms and texts, through the meanings and rational implications of those texts. The scholars deduced these rulings and discussed them by means of analogical reasoning. They did not go beyond this to discuss matters without any basis in the Quran and Sunnah, nor did they address matters that the Quran—and then the Sunnah—had forbidden them to discuss or delve into. This was the distinction between the two kinds of discourse.”

He said:

“Al-Shāfiʿī indicated this general principle and clarified it through his prohibition of inquiry into speculative theology and his criticism of the approaches of speculative theologians. His prohibition of uncritical imitation obliged him to undertake inquiry and reasoned inference. We thus know that what he prohibited was not what he commanded. It became clear to us that, concerning fundamentals, he followed a third approach: neither uncritical imitation nor tajrīd of the methods of those who plunge into the depths of speculative theology and wade through its valleys. Rather, it consists in reasoning from the rationally intelligible foundations of