intentionally.” And His words:

“And whoever kills a believer by mistake must free a believing slave and pay compensation to the deceased’s family.”

And His words:

“To worship Allah, devoting my religion sincerely to Him.”

And His words:

“Do not kill the soul that Allah has forbidden, except by right.”

And His words:

“Except those who repent before you gain power over them.”

And His words:

“Unless they commit a clear indecency.”

And His words:

“Those who declare their wives unlawful to them by zihār, then go back on what they have said.”

And His words:

“And whoever does righteous deeds, whether male or female, while being a believer.”

And His words:

“They drank from it, except a few of them.”

And His words:

“And have no witnesses except themselves.”

And His words:

“You will surely enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, in safety.”

There are countless similar examples, which could be enumerated only with difficulty.

Whoever regards all this as figurative, holding that in all these and similar expressions the Arabs use words in senses other than those for which they were originally coined, advances a claim whose falsity is self-evident. His position also entails that most speech is figurative, since the same consequence follows for every unrestricted expression to which a qualification is added.

Sentences are of two kinds: nominal and verbal. A nominal sentence is fundamentally composed of a subject and predicate. It would therefore follow that whenever its subject and predicate are modified, an exception is introduced, or a circumstantial qualifier is added, the sentence becomes figurative.

His position also entails that when kāna (“was”) and its related verbs, inna (“indeed”) and its related particles, or zanantu (“I thought”) and its related verbs are introduced into the sentence, changing its meaning and grammatical inflection, it becomes figurative. For a qualification may occur at the beginning of a sentence, in its middle, or at its end