of the revealed texts. Only the Lord of lords can enumerate their contradictions and inconsistencies in this regard.

The early Muslim generations and the imams, by contrast, were altogether different in their fairness, uprightness, and conformity to sound reason and authentic revelation. Although collectively protected from error, their individual members nevertheless did not presume to oppose well-known texts and recognized rational truths as boldly as these sophists do. They employed rational analogy in the manner presented in the Quran, in the examples Allah Most High set forth for people.

For Allah has set forth every kind of example for people in the Quran. Through rational analogies acceptable to sound reason, He has clarified matters concerning God and His purposes that the speculations of these men of strained reasoning have failed to reach—in questions and methods, in judgments