of this belongs elsewhere. I have devoted a volume to it, besides my other writings on the subject. People have discussed this term and what it denotes at great length, for it is the pivot around which religion revolves. No terms have greater bearing on felicity and misery, praise and blame, reward and punishment than the terms “faith” and “disbelief.” Hence this foundational subject is called “questions of designations and rulings.”

I have seen a work on this subject by Ibn al-Haysam arguing that faith consists solely of verbal profession, and another by Ibn al-Bāqillānī arguing that it consists solely of the heart’s assent. Both lived in the same age, and both refuted the Mu‘tazilah and the Rāfidah.

“The point here” is that the early generations held fast to the Quran and faith. When division and disagreement arose within the Muslim community, those involved split into factions. Their underlying reliance was not on the Quran and faith, but on principles introduced by their teachers, upon which they relied concerning Allah’s oneness, His attributes, divine decree, faith in the Messenger, and other matters. They then cited as evidence whatever they thought agreed with those principles in the Quran, while reinterpreting whatever contradicted them.

Thus, when they cite the Quran and hadith as evidence, you find that they take no care to establish precisely what they signify, nor do they examine exhaustively what the Quran contains concerning the matter in question, since their actual reliance is on something else. As for the verses that contradict their positions, they set about reinterpreting them like someone intent on rejecting them by any means possible;