a scribe of revelation. He then apostatized and joined the polytheists, so the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, declared his life forfeit in the year of the conquest. Then Uthmān brought him to the Prophet, who accepted his pledge of allegiance to Islam.

Thus, whoever writes works on the doctrines of the polytheists and their like is, at best, a Muslim. Many of these leaders are like this: at times, you find them openly apostatizing from Islam, and at other times returning to it with sickness and hypocrisy in their hearts. They may also enter a third state, in which faith prevails over hypocrisy. Yet they seldom escape some form of hypocrisy, and accounts of this concerning them are well known. Ibn Qutaybah mentioned some of these accounts at the beginning of Mukhtalif al-hadīth (Conflicting Hadiths). Writers on religious doctrines have also recorded some such accounts concerning certain individuals, as reported by others. These are mentioned by Abū Īsā al-Warrāq, al-Nawbakhtī, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash'arī, Judge Abū Bakr ibn al-Bāqillānī, Abū Abd Allāh al-Shahrastānī, and others who record the doctrines of the speculative theologians.

Even more serious than this is that some of them write works on the religion of the polytheists and apostasy from Islam. Thus al-Rāzī wrote his book on the worship of heavenly bodies and idols, presented arguments for its goodness and benefit, and encouraged it. This constitutes apostasy from Islam by the consensus of the Muslims, although he may have repented of it and returned to Islam.

What is remarkable is that the speculative theologians claim that the adherents of hadith and the Sunnah are followers of received authority, not practitioners of rational inquiry and argument, and that they reject reason as a source of proof. Sometimes a rejection of rational inquiry is attributed to certain imams of the Sunnah, and this is among the things for which they reproach them.