answer on the basis of these rulings, they see the corruption this entails and the rejection it provokes in believers’ hearts, and so refrain.

But the most important matter in this and other areas is to distinguish the Sunnah from religious innovation. The Sunnah is what the Lawgiver has commanded, whereas religious innovation is whatever has not been prescribed as part of the religion. There has been much confusion in this matter, concerning both foundational principles and subsidiary rulings. Each group claims that its own way is the Sunnah and its opponents’ way is innovation. It then judges its opponents as adherents of innovation, giving rise to evils that Allah alone can number.

The first to go astray in this regard were the renegade Khawārij. They judged themselves to be those who adhered to Allah’s Book and His Sunnah, while regarding ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah, and both armies as people of disobedience and innovation. They consequently deemed lawful what they did to Muslims.

The purpose here is not to discuss manifest innovations that even ordinary people recognize as such, like the innovations of the Khawārij, the Rāfidah, and others of that kind. Rather, it is to draw attention to instances of this among the groups most closely associated with the Sunnah and most emphatic in professing adherence to it, such as those associated with hadith, including Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad. There is no doubt that these scholars follow the Sunnah more closely and condemn innovation more strongly than others. Imams such as Mālik, Ahmad, Ibn al-Mubārak, Hammād ibn Zayd, al-Awzāʿī, and others have spoken at great length—as Allah Most High has willed—about condemning, shunning, and punishing adherents of innovation.

These statements were heard by groups of their followers and imitators. Then they