{And the slave woman whom the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, asked, “Where is Allah?” She replied, “In heaven.” He said, “Set her free, for she is a believer.”} was a non-Arab slave woman. Who, do you think, had taught her and informed her of what she said? She was simply expressing the innate disposition upon which Allah Most High had created her. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, affirmed her answer and testified to her faith.

Let anyone endowed with reason reflect on this: he will find that it guides him to know his Lord and acknowledge Him as he should—not the innovations of those given to excessive speculation and pretentious speech, whom Satan has beguiled and lulled with false hopes.

One example is that leading speculative theologians who have mixed theology with philosophy count certain things among carefully guarded secrets and hidden sciences. Yet anyone with even a little reason and religious commitment who examines these things will find such ignorance and error in them that he would never have imagined these men falling into them. Indeed, he may even refuse to believe that such things came from them.

An example is the commentary on the hadith of the Ascension composed by Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāzī, in which he followed the example of Ibn Sīnā and ʿAyn al-Qudāt al-Hamdānī. He related the hadith of the Ascension in a lengthy narrative, with peculiar names and a sequence found nowhere in the books of the Muslims—not in the authentic, good, or weak hadiths transmitted among the scholars. It was merely fabricated by some beggars and storytellers, some devilish preachers, or some heretics.

Then, despite his ignorance of the hadith of the Ascension—the account found in the books of hadith, Quranic commentary, and the Prophet’s biography—and his turning away from what these books contain to something never heard from a scholar and not found