should put it into practice until he hears a report concerning it; once he does hear such a report, it is light upon light.

Junayd ibn Muḥammad said, “Our whole discipline is bound by the Book and the Sunnah; whoever has not recited the Qur’an and written down the ḥadīth is not to be followed in this matter.”

The point, then, is this: if ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—who is the greatest of the friends of God granted divinely inspired speech with no prophet as intermediary—and al-Tirmidhī has related that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said,

“If I had not been sent to you, ʿUmar would have been sent,”

such was his station. How, then, can anyone else among the saints compare? And how could what a saint receives without a prophet’s mediation be superior to what he receives through the prophet? An inspiration of this kind is not, by itself, trustworthy, nor may one act upon it unless it is weighed against the Book and the Sunnah. Whatever the Book and the Sunnah bring is protected from error; it must be believed and followed.

Even so, Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq is superior to ʿUmar, though Abū Bakr was not an Inspired One (muḥaddath) as ʿUmar was. Rather, he drew from the lantern-niche of prophethood what others receive by way of inspiration.