in exactly the same way.

Yet because practical rulings have numerous ramifications and require detailed elaboration, people have become reconciled to disputes and differences concerning them, unlike doctrinal matters. Disagreement is a harm that should be tolerated only to avert something worse. Thus, when necessity called for elaborating the rulings governing actions and their numerous ramifications—which inevitably gives rise to disputes—people became reconciled to disagreement concerning them.

Doctrinal matters are different: agreement has already been reached on their broad fundamentals. If their details can be explained without dispute, that is good. But if disputes arise over those details, this constitutes harm for which there is no compelling need. Hence the censure of those given to desires and contention, and of those who engage in disputation and controversy over these matters: it brings evil and corruption without any compelling need.

Nevertheless, this does not preclude explaining these matters in detail, knowing their subtleties and essentials, and discussing them on the basis of knowledge, provided no harm results. Nor does it warrant declaring everyone who errs concerning them an unbeliever, unless the conditions for declaring him an unbeliever are fulfilled in his case. All this, by my life, concerns disagreement involving genuine contradiction. As for other forms of disagreement—such as differences of variety, perspective, or wording—these are a minor matter, and they account for much, or most, of the disagreement over doctrinal questions.

As for “the Sufis and devout worshippers”—indeed, most ordinary people as well—their criterion is the actual performance or neglect of righteous deeds. When these deeds are present, a man is thereby counted among them—even if he errs in