the Book and the Sunnah, using these expressions and the like, rather than what the Book and the Sunnah convey either explicitly or in their apparent meaning, then how can it be supposed that Allah Most High, then His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and then the best of this community continually speak in terms that either explicitly or apparently contradict the truth, yet never disclose the truth that must be believed, nor indicate it either explicitly or apparently—until the Nabataeans among the Persians and Romans, the offspring of the Jews and Christians, and the philosophers come to explain to the community the correct creed that every morally accountable person, or every person of learning, must believe?

If what these speculative theologians, with their strained arguments, say is indeed the belief that is obligatory, and if people are nevertheless directed to rely solely on their own reason to learn it and to reject, on the strength of their rational inferences, what the Book and the Sunnah convey explicitly or apparently, then leaving people without a Book or a Sunnah would, on this supposition, have afforded them better guidance and greater benefit. Indeed, the very existence of the Book and the Sunnah would have been wholly harmful to the foundation of religion.

For what their position really amounts to is this:

“O servants of Allah, do not seek knowledge of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, or of the attributes that must be affirmed or denied of Him, from the Book, the Sunnah, or the way of the early generations of this community. Instead, consider the matter yourselves: whatever attributes you find Him worthy of, ascribe them to Him—whether or not they are found in the Book and the Sunnah. Whatever attributes your reason does not find Him worthy of, do not ascribe them to Him.”