Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him and sanctify his soul—said:

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Statements are of two kinds:

The first kind consists of statements authentically transmitted from the prophets. These are free from error, and their meaning is necessarily true, whether people understand it or remain ignorant of it. Inquiry into them concerns only what the prophets intended. Whoever seeks to understand their intent through the means by which it can be known has followed the path of guidance. But whoever seeks to subordinate their words to his own views—accepting them if they agree with him, otherwise rejecting them and contriving distortions that he calls “interpretation,” despite knowing with certainty that much, or most, of this was not intended by the prophets—is distorting words from their proper places, not seeking the interpretation known to those firmly grounded in knowledge.

The second kind consists of statements not transmitted from the prophets. Those other than the prophets are not protected from error, so a person’s words should neither be accepted nor rejected until his intended meaning is understood and its soundness or unsoundness determined.