He—may Allah have mercy on him—also said:

Regarding questions of religious fundamentals, many speculative theologians and jurists, both within our school and elsewhere, require everyone to engage in rational inquiry and inference, including ordinary people and women. They even require this concerning questions disputed by the eminent scholars of the Muslim community. They argue: “Knowledge of these matters is obligatory, and such knowledge can only be attained through a specific process of rational inquiry.”

The majority of the Muslim community, however, holds otherwise. Knowledge of matters that must be known is obligatory only upon those capable of acquiring it. Many people are incapable of understanding these subtleties, so how can they be required to know them?

Moreover, knowledge may be attained without a specific process of rational inquiry, through other means: knowledge arising necessarily, unveiling, following someone whom one knows to be correct, and so forth.

At the opposite extreme are some hadith scholars, jurists, and ordinary people who may prohibit inquiry into subtle questions of knowledge, reasoning about them, and discussing them—even for those versed in them and those qualified people who need to address them. They require people either to follow others on authority in these matters or to refrain from examining their details.