jurist, a half-trained physician, and a half-trained grammarian. The first corrupts religions, the second corrupts countries, the third corrupts bodies, and the fourth corrupts language.”

Anyone who knows that speculative theologians, whether philosophers or others, are generally “of conflicting views”—“turned away from it is whoever is turned away”—also knows that the intelligent and sensible among them recognize that they have no clear insight into what they say and that their arguments are not clear proofs. Rather, their arguments are as the poet described them:

“Arguments that shatter like glass—you think them true,
Yet every breaker is itself broken.”

Anyone with a thorough and discerning knowledge of them knows that, from one perspective, they deserve what al-Shāfiʿī, may Allah be pleased with him, prescribed when he said:

“My judgment concerning the practitioners of speculative theology is that they should be beaten with palm branches and sandals, paraded among the tribes and clans, and it should be proclaimed: ‘This is the recompense of anyone who turns away from the Book and Sunnah and turns to speculative theology.’”

From another perspective, however, if you view them in light of divine decree—with bewilderment overwhelming them and Satan holding sway over them—you would pity them and treat them gently. They were given intelligence, yet were not given intelligence; they were given understanding, yet were not given knowledge. They were given hearing, sight, and hearts:

“Yet their hearing, sight, and hearts availed them nothing, since they denied Allah’s signs; and what they used to mock engulfed them.”

For anyone well acquainted with these matters, this makes clear the early Muslim generations’ expertise, knowledge, and experience