Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah be pleased with him—replied:

Praise be to Allah. The fundamental principle underlying this “question” is that we must follow what the terms found in the Quran and Sunnah signify. These include faith, righteousness, mindfulness of Allah, truthfulness, justice, excellence in doing good, patience, gratitude, reliance upon Allah, fear, hope, love for Allah, obedience to Allah and His Messenger, kindness to parents, fulfilment of covenants, and similar terms describing the inward states and outward deeds that Allah and His Messenger love.

These things that Allah and His Messenger love constitute the path leading to Allah, together with abstaining from what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden: disbelief, hypocrisy, lying, sin, aggression, injustice, impatience, panic, associating partners with Allah, miserliness, cowardice, hardness of heart, treachery, severing family ties, and the like.

Every Muslim must therefore consider what Allah and His Messenger have commanded and do it, and what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden and abstain from it. This is Allah’s path, His way and His religion: the straight path, the path of those whom Allah has blessed—the prophets, the utterly truthful, the martyrs and the righteous.

This “straight path” encompasses both knowledge and action: knowledge of the revealed law and action in accordance with it. Whoever has knowledge but does not act upon it is wicked, while whoever acts without knowledge is astray. Allah, glorified be He, has commanded us to say:

“Guide us to the straight path—the path of those You have blessed, not those who have incurred Your wrath, nor those who have gone astray.”

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “The Jews have incurred wrath, and the Christians