Furthermore, these people are bewildered and confused about what the prophets say. The light of prophethood has dazzled them, yet prophethood does not accord with their corrupt principles. They have therefore taken “different approaches”: some do not believe much of what the prophets and messengers say, but instead turn away from it, doubt it, or deny it. Others say, “Lying is permissible for an overriding benefit, and the prophets did so.” Others say, “This is permissible for the benefit of the common people, but not the elite.” The best among them say, “Rather, these are imaginative representations and parables intended to make realities accessible to the hearts of the common people.” This is the approach of al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, although Ibn Sīnā is closer to faith in certain respects, even though he is not a believer.

Anyone among them whom the message of Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—has reached, who has been dazzled by its proofs and light, and who has seen the various kinds of beneficial knowledge and righteous deeds it contains—so much so that Ibn Sīnā said, “The philosophers of the world agree that no dispensation better than this dispensation has ever come into the world”—inevitably reinterprets the texts of the Book and the Sunnah, following his fellows’ practice of distorting words from their proper meanings. Thus they distort what the messengers have related concerning Allah’s speech, a distortion by which they become disbelievers in part of the Book’s meaning concerning certain attributes of its revelation.

When they saw that the messengers called this speech the speech of Allah, and stated that Allah’s angels, such as the Trustworthy Spirit, Gabriel, brought it down, they employed this