what their opponents may imagine because of the darkness of their hearts and the desires of their souls, or what they may falsely attribute to them because of their lack of piety and scant religious commitment. Even if one were to suppose—purely hypothetically—that sound reason, which never errs, contradicted some transmitted reports, one of two things would necessarily follow: either the transmitter would have to be judged untruthful, or the transmitted report would have to be interpreted otherwise. Yet, praise be to Allah, this has not happened, nor can it ever happen, for Allah’s preservation of the Book and Wisdom He revealed precludes it. Such contradictions do, however, occur in reports fabricated by heretics to discredit the people of hadith, such as the reports about “the sweat of horses” and “the grey camel,” and other reports that hadith scholars know to be lies.

This is further clarified by the widely transmitted accounts of Islamic scholars—such as al-Shāfiʿī, al-Humaydī (?), Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh, and others—condemning anyone who claimed that the utterance of the Quran is created. The reports concerning this are well known in the book of Ibn Abī Hātim, the book of al-Lālakā’ī, the student of Abū Hāmid al-Isfarāyīnī, the book of al-Tabarānī, the book of Shaykh al-Islām, and the works of others whose enumeration would be lengthy. This is not the place to establish the matter through evidence, questions, and answers.