And Shaykh Abū ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī included a selection of such interpretations in his Haqā’iq al-tafsīr. Discussing this, however, is not our present purpose, for it is a separate subject. Our purpose is only to explain the ruling on invoking the name alone, without a complete utterance. The scriptural evidence has shown that this is not recommended, as has rational and experiential evidence.

The name alone conveys neither faith nor unbelief, guidance nor misguidance, knowledge nor ignorance. Someone may mention the name of a prophet, a pharaoh, or an idol, yet no judgment attaches to merely mentioning the name unless he adds something indicating negation or affirmation, love or hatred. He may also name something existent or nonexistent. Thus, scholars of Arabic and all other languages agree that a name alone cannot properly stand on its own: it is neither a complete sentence nor an informative utterance.

For this reason, when an Arab heard a caller to prayer say, “I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,” he asked, “What did he do?” By putting the noun in the accusative, the caller had made it a descriptive qualifier, and a qualifier forms part of the noun phrase it describes. The Arab’s sound linguistic instinct therefore led him to ask for an informative predicate. The caller, however, had intended it as the predicate but made a grammatical error.