And how can it be fitting for people such as these to accuse the people of hadith and the Sunnah of empty verbiage? These are the people greatest in knowledge, certainty, reassurance, and tranquillity. They know, and they know that they know; they are certain of the truth, neither doubting nor wavering.

As for the certainty, knowledge, and guidance granted to the scholars of hadith and the most distinguished among them, this is beyond description. Yet even their ordinary followers possess certainty and beneficial knowledge of which the leading speculative theologians who engage in philosophy have acquired nothing. This is evident and plain for everyone to see.

The most any of them can say is that these people have reached firm convictions without evidence and held resolutely to them without proof, merely accepting the views of others. This may indeed be true of many ordinary people. But conviction grounded in knowledge differs from conviction grounded in desire. Someone who is certain without knowledge recognizes within himself that he does not know what he is certain of, whereas someone whose certainty rests on knowledge recognizes within himself that he knows.

For knowing or not knowing is like hearing and seeing, or not hearing and seeing: a person recognizes this within himself, just as he recognizes that he loves or hates, desires or dislikes, is happy or sad, experiences pleasure or suffering, and so forth. Someone who doubts that he knows when he does know is like someone who is certain that he knows when he does not. This resembles someone who doubts that he has heard and seen, or who is certain that he has heard and seen something he has neither heard nor seen.

A person may err or lie in either denying or affirming. Yet such incidental error or falsehood does not prevent him from having firm, undoubting certainty about these matters, just as he is certain of the tastes and smells he perceives, even though a disturbance may arise that makes something sweet taste bitter to him.