The sixth point is this: What does he mean by saying, “Let him acquire a different natural disposition,” when they themselves have explicitly stated that seeking to change innate dispositions is among the most ill-conceived ambitions and is virtually impossible? How, then, can they produce a different natural disposition? The natural disposition is the constitution upon which Allah created His servants. Do you mean that a person should change his constitution, including its faculties of perception and movement? This is beyond human power, for Allah Most High created His servants with these faculties. Or do you mean that he should abandon the knowledge and understanding with which he was naturally endowed and acquire knowledge that contradicts it? This is what he could plausibly mean.

This, then, is a command to change the natural disposition upon which Allah created His servants. Such is the way of the innovators who alter the natural disposition established by Allah and His revealed law. As the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“Every child is born upon the natural disposition. Then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, a Magian, or a polytheist.”

Those who received the revealed Scripture altered and distorted what they did of the Book of Allah Most High. Together with the Sabians and polytheists who rely on rational inquiry, they altered aspects of the natural disposition upon which Allah Most High created His servants, and made such changes to it as