a prominent figure among them will author a whole book on the reports concerning the divine attributes, or on refuting the figurative interpretation of those reports, and in it he will place forged ḥadīths side-by-side with sound, well-attested ḥadīths, treating them all alike. I have personally seen more than one writer on the Sunnah—followers of the ḥadīth methodology among the adherents of Mālik, Aḥmad, al-Shāfiʿī, and others, whether Sufis, ḥadīth scholars, or speculative theologians—who cite, in the fundamentals of faith, ḥadīths that are not reliable enough even for exhortations on virtuous deeds, much less for matters of jurisprudence, and certainly not for the foundations of religion.
The early imams, by contrast, would transmit everything found in a given chapter—so long as it was not known to be fabricated—whether elevated (marfūʿ), continuous (musnad), halted (mawqūf), or reports from the Companions and their Successors, because each report lends support to the others. In the same way, when a doctrinal issue is presented, the opinions of the leading imams and the Salaf are laid out. Thus, some pieces of evidence are cited for reliance, others for corroboration, and still others merely because they are not known to be false.
After acquainting oneself with the texts, however, one must grasp their meaning. Many who affiliate themselves with the Sunnah—and others besides—have imagined that the “interpretation known only to Allah” is the very meaning of the speech for whose clarification the Qur’an was revealed. They end up treating large portions of the Qur’an—speech addressed to people, sent down to them, and one they were commanded to recite and ponder—as words whose meaning cannot be understood and for which there is no way to know what the Speaker intended.
Some even relate that a person heard speech that in reality carried no meaning at all—just as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, in his Maḥṣūl, reports of a group he calls the Ḥashwiyyah that they said: “It is permissible for Allah to utter words without intending anything by them.” Yet I know of no one who actually holds this view; in fact, none of the groups of Muslims has ever said such a thing.