their terminology, which becomes ambiguous, encompassing both truth and falsehood. This gives rise to misguidance contrary to the very purpose of balances. These balances thus become unjust rather than just. In using them, they become defrauders:

“Who, when they take a measure from people, take in full,”

“But when they give by measure or weight to them, they give less.”

Yet how can defrauding people of wealth compare with defrauding them in matters of reason and religion? Most of them, however, do not intend to defraud. Rather, they are like someone who inherited scales from his father and uses them to weigh, sometimes to his advantage and sometimes to his disadvantage, without knowing whether they are just or unjust. The balance that Allah sent down with the Book is a just balance. It involves comparing a thing with what resembles it and what differs from it, treating like things alike and distinguishing between unlike things, through the recognition of similarities and differences that Allah has instilled in His servants’ natural dispositions and minds.

If it is asked, “If this can be known through reason, why did Allah include it among the things with which He sent the Messengers?”

The answer is: Because the Messengers set forth rational comparisons for people through which they could recognize similarities and differences. The Messengers directed and guided people to the means of recognizing justice and sound rational inferences by which religious truths are established. Prophetic knowledge is therefore not confined to reports. Rather, the Messengers—may Allah’s blessings be upon them—explained the rational knowledge through which Allah’s religion is perfected in knowledge and practice. They set forth parables, thereby perfecting the natural disposition through what they brought to its attention and guided it toward when it had been heedless of it