to engage in the kinds of discourse people had engaged in, which contained forbidden ignorance and falsehood.

The truth of the matter is that speaking with the knowledge Allah and His Messenger have made clear is commanded, and this is the knowledge a person should seek. Speaking without knowledge, however, is blameworthy, and whoever says anything contrary to the Quran and Sunnah has spoken without knowledge. A person may speak on the basis of what he considers knowledge—whether an opinion he has formed or a report that has reached him—yet still be speaking without knowledge.

Such a person may sometimes be excused, though he is not to be followed. But he may be blameworthy if he wrongs someone else and, out of transgression, rejects the truth that person holds. Allah condemned this when He said:

“Those who were given the Scripture did not differ until after knowledge had come to them, out of mutual envy.”

Transgression is blameworthy without exception, whether a person imposes obligations on people that are not binding upon them and censures them for neglecting them, or censures them for matters in which they are excused and for which Allah forgives their errors. Whoever censures and punishes people for something for which Allah Most High has neither censured nor punished them has transgressed against them, especially if he does so to serve his own desires. Allah Most High said:

“Do not follow your own desire, lest it lead you astray from the way of Allah.”

Allah Most High also said:

“But man undertook it. Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant—so that Allah may punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the polytheists, men and women, and turn in mercy to the believers, men and women.”