what you claim to be reason, and you have made the entire Quran—its clear and ambiguous passages alike—subject to it. Whatever conflicts with it is deemed ambiguous. Thus, no clear passage remains in the Quran to which ambiguous passages can be referred, or which serves as the foundation and basis of the Book.

The eighth point: According to your position, no one has any way of knowing that any passage of the Quran is clear. This would be possible only if the absence of any conflicting rational evidence were known. Yet that absence is not known, so no passage can be judged with certainty to be clear.

If you say, “I maintain that diverting an expression from its apparent meaning to its less likely meaning is permissible only when conclusive evidence establishes that its apparent meaning is impossible,” the answer is: You also maintain that an expression need not be understood according to its apparent meaning unless rational evidence establishes that this apparent meaning is true. Whatever is unsupported by rational evidence cannot be affirmed with certainty, just as it cannot be denied with certainty unless rational evidence negates it. Thus, in your view, rational evidence is the basis for certainty in both denial and affirmation. The Quran has no effect: what it denies is not denied with certainty, nor is what it affirms affirmed with certainty. This is the condition of one who does not believe in Allah and His Book, and of one who does not believe in what