The seventh is the position of those who say that the term has been transferred to a new meaning.

These, then, are seven positions.

(The first): The position of those who dispute that its linguistic meaning is affirmation, saying that it does not mean affirmation, but rather acknowledgment or something else.

As for his statement, “All authorities on the language unanimously agree that, before the revelation of the Quran, faith meant affirmation,” he may be asked: Who reported this consensus? How is this consensus known? In which book is this consensus mentioned?

(The second): It may be asked: By “authorities on the language,” do you mean those who transmit it, such as Abū ʿAmr, al-Asmaʿī, al-Khalīl, and others like them, or those who speak it? If you mean the former, these scholars do not transmit everything that existed before Islam with a chain of transmission. Rather, they transmit what they heard from the Arabs of their own time, and what they heard through chains of transmission from collections of poetry, Arab speech, and other material. We know of no occurrence of the term “faith” in what they transmitted, much less any consensus among them concerning it. If you mean those who used this term before Islam, we did not witness them, nor has anyone transmitted this from them to us.

(The third): It is not known that all these scholars said, “Faith, in the language, means affirmation”—nor, indeed, that any of them said it. Even supposing that one or two said it, that would not constitute a consensus.

(The fourth): It may be said: These scholars do not transmit statements from the Arabs saying, “This term means such-and-such.” Rather, they transmit speech heard from the Arabs and state that such-and-such is understood from it. Thus, even supposing that they transmitted speech from the Arabs from which it could be understood that faith is