or a correct conception of the two terms of a proposition in matters of non-inferential knowledge.

As for the beneficial knowledge through which people are saved from the Fire and attain happiness, it can only be acquired by following the scriptures brought by the messengers. Allah Most High says:

“When guidance comes to you from Me, whoever follows My guidance will neither go astray nor fall into misery.”

“But whoever turns away from My remembrance will have a life of hardship, and We shall raise him blind on the Day of Resurrection.”

“He will say, ‘My Lord, why have You raised me blind when I used to see?’”

“He will say, ‘Thus it is: Our signs came to you, but you forgot them; likewise, today you will be forgotten.’”

“And thus We recompense whoever transgresses and does not believe,” and so on.

Allah Most High also says:

“Whoever turns away from the remembrance of the Most Merciful, We appoint for him a devil who becomes his companion.”

Whoever thinks that guidance and faith can be attained merely by pursuing knowledge without acting upon it, or merely through practice and asceticism without knowledge, has gone astray. More astray than either is someone who, in pursuing knowledge and understanding, follows the path of the philosophers and speculative theologians without testing it against the Quran and Sunnah or acting as knowledge requires; or someone who, in practice and asceticism, follows the path of the philosophers and Sufis without testing it against the Quran and Sunnah or assessing practice in light of knowledge.

The latter have turned away from knowledge and revealed law, while the former have turned away from practice and revealed law. Each group has thus gone astray in these two respects. They have diverged greatly, until one group came to resemble the Jews who incurred divine wrath, and the other the Christians who went astray. Indeed, among both groups are some who have become worse