But if he establishes a principle on mere personal opinion and makes it a general rule, this will gain acceptance only among those ignorant of the evidence and unversed in the issues. It is through such transmitted reports—whose truth is not distinguished from falsehood—and such rational arguments—whose correctness is not distinguished from error—that those among the people of the East who went astray did so in foundational principles, subsidiary matters, jurisprudence, and Sufism.
How fitting that this should arise in connection with the verse of Light, in which Allah Most High says:
“And he to whom Allah has not granted light—for him there is no light.”
We ask Allah to grant us light.
We then say: Some commentators have explained His words,
“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth,”
as meaning the Guide of the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth. This interpretation neither undermines our position nor contradicts what we have said. They offered it when explaining the verse in which “Light” occurs in a possessive construction; they did not offer it as an explanation of “Light” without qualification, as you claim it occurs in the hadith. How can the two be equated?
Moreover, the statement of some of the early generations that He is the Guide of the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth does not preclude His being Light in Himself. In their explanations, the early generations commonly mention some of the attributes of what a name denotes, or some of its types. This does not negate the other attributes of the entity so named—indeed, the two attributes may be inseparable—but the remaining types are not included in the particular type mentioned.
We have established this more than once in the preceding principles. Whoever reflects upon it will realize that most statements of the early generations concerning Quranic interpretation agree rather than conflict. An example is their explanation of
“the straight path”:
some say that it is Islam; another says that it is the Quran; and another, that it is the Sunnah