that you are still clinging to a view you are duty-bound to abandon, even though you know that your heedlessness about this matter of your religion—one about which heedlessness is impermissible—has already gone on far too long.
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He said, “Then cite something, if anything comes to mind.”
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I said: Allah—exalted is He—declares, “It is He who has sent among the unlettered a messenger from among themselves, reciting to them His verses, purifying them, and teaching them the Book and wisdom” (Q 62:2).
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He said, “We know that ‘the Book’ is the Book of Allah; what, then, is ‘wisdom’?”
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I replied, “The sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”
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He said, “Might it be that He teaches them the Book in a general sense, while ‘wisdom’ is something specific—namely, His rulings?”
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I said, “You mean that the Messenger clarifies on Allah’s behalf—majestic and sublime—just as he clarified for them the prescribed obligations of prayer, almsgiving, pilgrimage, and the like, so that Allah establishes an obligation in His Book and shows how it is to be carried out through the tongue of His Prophet ﷺ.”
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He said, “That is indeed possible.”
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I said, “If you take that position, then ‘wisdom’ has the same import as the former, and you can reach it only through a report from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”
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He said, “And what if we treat it as simple repetition of the same idea?”
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I said, “When the Book and wisdom are mentioned together, which is more fitting—that they be two distinct things or a single one?”
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I said, “The clearer of the two possibilities—and the one the Qur’an itself most plainly attests—supports what we have asserted, whereas the other view…"