in error and madness because of him, and were guided only by their own reason, for which they had no need of the Messenger. This is the true implication of these heretics’ position. His admission of this, and his answer to it in the manner of the heretics, will follow.

The seventeenth point is that this man and others like him contradict themselves. At times he says, “We know that the apparent meaning is ruled out, but we do not know what is intended.” At other times he says, “Rather, the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, addressed ordinary people in terms consistent with their existing conceptions. Had he begun by affirming the existence of a being that is neither a body nor spatially located, and cannot be pointed to, they would have said, ‘This is sheer nonexistence,’ and thus fallen into denial. The compromise, therefore, was to use expressions indicating something compatible with what they imagined and what it entailed for them.”

These are the words of someone who wants ordinary people to understand those meanings, even though, according to these thinkers, those meanings are false in reality. On this account, he intended