does not go to the extremes of others who incline toward denial or affirmation. Indeed, among the various groups you will find excesses in erroneous denial and erroneous affirmation whose like are not found among the Hanbalīs. Such transgression in denial and affirmation arose among them only through influences that crept in from others who overstepped Allah’s limits through excessive denial and affirmation. For the Sunnah rests fundamentally upon moderation and balance, not wrongdoing and transgression.

The knowledge possessed by “Imam Ahmad and his followers” was marked by a completeness and comprehensiveness well known to specialists and ordinary people alike who have some familiarity with the Sunnah and its adherents. As for the ignorant and misguided—those who do not know what Allah sent the Messenger with, and cannot distinguish authentic transmitted evidence and clear rational evidence from fabricated reports and confused opinions—they are ignorant of the standing of the Messenger and the earliest forerunners among the Emigrants and Helpers, whose merit the Quran proclaims. They are therefore all the more likely to be ignorant of the standing of the imams who oppose such people, since they more closely resemble those who oppose the Messenger and follow a path other than that of the believers endowed with knowledge and faith. In these circumstances, they are closer to disbelief than to faith.

You find one of them speaking about “the fundamental principles and subsidiary matters of religion” as though he had neither grown up in a Muslim land nor heard the teachings upheld by the people of knowledge and faith; as though he knew nothing of this community’s early generations and the excellence they were granted in beneficial knowledge and righteous deeds, nor knew enough of what Allah sent His Prophet with to distinguish guidance from misguidance, and error from right direction.