—their attributing all of this to the Torah that He revealed to His interlocutor, Moses. Were the sins of the Muslims to reach whatever magnitude imaginable, they would beside that amount to no more than a spit cast into the sea!!

Nor should you forget the story of their forefathers with Saul, who rebelled against David: the great majority of them sided with him and joined him in fighting David. Later, when they returned to David’s obedience, their envoys and battalions came seeking pardon and offering excuses, even quarrelling over who would reach him first. Just then a man among them rose and shouted at the top of his voice, “We have no share in David and no portion in Saul; (1) to your tents, O Israelites!” Hardly had he spoken before the entire host of the Children of Israel withdrew to their tents because of his word. When that shouter was killed, all the troops returned to serve David. The people were nothing but a mindless rabble: a drum gathers them, a stick scatters them!!

This community upon whom wrath has descended, though fractured into many splinter groups, still falls under two principal sects: the Karaites and the Rabbanites. Their early jurists (2) compiled two books for them: one called the Mishnah, about eight hundred folios in length; the other called the Talmud, amounting to nearly half a mule-load. The compilers were not contemporaries; rather, the work was produced generation after generation. When their later scholars examined it and saw that with each passing age new material had been appended—material that in many places contradicted the earlier text—they realized that, unless they closed the door to further additions, the result would be grievous disorder. They therefore froze the text and forbade their jurists (3) from adding anything more.