those who lack knowledge of the reality of the Prophet’s affairs—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—deny this or withhold judgment on it, even if they have some knowledge of speculative theology, jurisprudence, arithmetic, or other subjects. The same applies to those who have heard fabricated hadiths contradicting these facts, which specialist scholars know with necessary certainty, and have consequently withheld judgment or preferred someone other than Abū Bakr.

This is like other matters known with necessary certainty to those versed in the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—even though others doubt or deny them. These include the hadiths established among them through mass transmission concerning his intercession, his Cistern, and the emergence of those guilty of major sins from the Fire; and those similarly established concerning Allah’s attributes, divine decree, His exaltedness, the vision of Him, and other fundamental principles upon which those versed in his Sunnah agree, as these have been transmitted to them from him through mass transmission—even if others are unaware of this.

Likewise, specialist scholars have received through mass transmission from him the rulings concerning the right of pre-emption, requiring the defendant to swear an oath, stoning an adulterer who has consummated a valid marriage, and requiring a minimum value for stolen property, together with similar rulings disputed by some adherents of religious innovation. For this reason, the leading scholars of Islam agreed that anyone who opposed such fundamental principles was to be deemed an adherent of religious innovation.

This differs from disagreement over matters of independent juristic reasoning in which the transmitted practices of the Prophet have not reached this degree of mass transmission. Examples include their disagreements over adjudicating on the basis of one witness and an oath, qasāma (the oath procedure in homicide cases), drawing lots, and other matters that have not reached this degree.

As for “ ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī,” the question of their relative merit is less firmly established than the preceding one, for disagreement had arisen over it