As for the majority of the Muslim community and the people of hadith, jurisprudence, and Sufism, they adhere to what the messengers brought and to the scriptures and transmitted knowledge handed down from them. They follow the revealed message purely, without mixing it with contrary doctrines of the Sabians. Their position is that the Quran is Allah’s speech: they do not regard part of it as Allah’s speech and another part as something other than His speech. The Quran is precisely what Muslims recognize as the Quran—both its letters and its meanings. Commands and prohibitions likewise comprise both wording and meaning.

For this reason, jurists who wrote on the principles of jurisprudence from all the schools—the Hanafī, Mālikī, Shāfi'ī, and Hanbalī schools—affirmed this when discussing commands and prohibitions, provided they did not depart from the positions of the imams and jurists. They opposed those who said that a command is an abstract meaning alone.

Those who preserve the knowledge transmitted from the Prophet—the people of the Sunnah and hadith, the general body of Muslims, who constitute the great majority of those who pray toward the qiblah—know that His words, Most High,

“Alif Lām Mīm.”

“This is the Book about which there is no doubt,”

and similar passages are Allah’s speech, not anyone else’s. Allah’s speech is what He has spoken, not something He created in something other than Himself without speaking it Himself.