he receives one reward.” This applies to matters of analogy and reflection, pursued through reason and judgment; to transmitted accounts and reports, received through hearing, understanding, and reason; and to sensory perception and sight, through which a person experiences and apprehends things directly.

These three means of apprehension may give a person knowledge of which he is certain and which, for him, constitutes necessary knowledge. Examples include the necessary knowledge he finds within himself, and what he has heard from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), or from truthful informants whose reports convey knowledge to him. Such is a mass-transmitted report, which yields knowledge sometimes through the number of its transmitters, sometimes through their qualities, sometimes through both, or through other factors that yield knowledge.

He may also know something through its indicative effects, or through a judgment reached by reasoning that corresponds to it in every respect, or that points to the other by an a fortiori inference and indication, and other such means. Even so, another person may be certain of these matters while exercising his own judgment, owing to the subtlety or obscurity of the knowledge involved, or to the presence of something he believes contradicts it, although it does not truly do so. It is thus mistaken for counterevidence, through confusion about what constitutes counterevidence, arising from ambiguity in meanings or from words having multiple meanings.

This is among the greatest causes of disagreement among human beings, believers and others alike. Hence, among those who disagree, we find each group claiming necessary knowledge for what it says, whether through analogy and reflection, through hearing and reports, or through sensory perception and sight. Neither of the two groups is lying; rather, each is truthful.