were to walk into a grocery store and see a loaf of bread, he would ask, “How much is a loaf of bread?” Such specification is not meant to define the word exhaustively—nothing more and nothing less—but only to supply an illustrative example.

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A case in point is the report concerning His statement: “Then We caused those whom We have chosen from among Our servants to inherit the Book: some of them wrong themselves, some are moderate, and some race ahead in good deeds” (Q 35:32).

Explanation
The Exalted says: “Then We caused those We have chosen to inherit the Book.” The relative pronoun “those” does not function as an adjective for “the Book.” The correct grammatical parsing is that “the Book” is the first direct object, while “those” is the second.

He further says: “Then We caused those whom We have chosen from among Our servants to inherit the Book.” The servants whom God has chosen here are the Muslim nation, for the last scripture to be revealed is this Qur’an.

It is well known that “those who wrong themselves” includes anyone who neglects the obligations or violates the prohibitions; “the moderate” covers those who perform what is obligatory and abstain from what is forbidden; and “the forerunner” embraces anyone who goes beyond that by drawing near to God with voluntary good deeds in addition to the obligatory ones. The moderates are the Companions of the Right, whereas the forerunners—indeed, the forerunners—are those brought near.

Next, each scholar applies this threefold classification to a particular act of devotion, such as saying: the forerunner is the one who performs the prayer at the very start of its time, the moderate