This has the same meaning as saying: “The validity of the prayer entails the validity of the ritual purification”; or: “The validity of the prayer entails the presence of ritual purity”; or: “A person cannot be praying unless he is ritually pure”; or: “Ritual purity is a condition for the validity of prayer, and when the condition is absent, that which depends upon it is absent”; or: “Everyone who prays is ritually pure; therefore, whoever is not ritually pure is not praying.” There are similar ways of combining words and meanings that convey this inference, rather than confining people to a single formulation.

As minds and their conceptions expand, so do their forms of expression. When minds, expressions, and conceptions become narrow, a person’s intellect and tongue remain as though imprisoned. This is what happens to the adherents of Greek logic: you find them among the narrowest of people in knowledge and exposition, and among the least capable of conceiving and expressing ideas.

Thus, even an intelligent person, when engaging with the various disciplines and following the logicians’ approach, becomes long-winded and restrictive, laboured and strained. At best, he explains the evident and clarifies the obvious—an instance of inarticulacy. This may also lead him into various forms of sophistry from which Allah has spared those who have not followed their path.

The same applies to their laboured definitions, such as their definition of man, and their definition of the sun as “a celestial body that rises by day.” Is anyone who recognizes the sun through such a definition or the like anything but among the most ignorant of people? Is anything more apparent to people than the sun?

Someone who does not know the sun is either unfamiliar with the word, in which case it can be translated for him—but this is not the kind of definition they describe—or he has never seen it because he is blind, in which case he cannot see daylight, let alone the stars