“If you allow anyone from Muhammad’s community to enter the Fire, I disown you”—whereupon another challenged him, saying, “I told my disciples, ‘If you allow anyone from Muhammad’s community to enter the Fire, I disown you’”—and who believes this report about Abū Yazīd or another shaykh, then admires it and regards his spiritual standing as exalted, has shown his profound ignorance or hypocrisy.

For if he knows what the Messenger foretold—that some who commit major sins will enter the Fire, and that the Prophet—Allah bless him and grant him peace—will be the first whose intercession on their behalf is accepted, after intercession has been sought from the great messengers, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, who will decline and offer their excuses—yet believes that the disciples of Abū Yazīd or another shaykh can prevent anyone from the community from entering the Fire, or that they themselves can bring out everyone who enters it, then he has disbelieved what the truthful and trustworthy Messenger foretold on the strength of a story whose transmitter lied, or whose original speaker was mistaken, if he was not deliberately lying. If, however, he does not know what the Messenger foretold, then he is among the most ignorant of people concerning the foundations of faith.

A Muslim must therefore hold firmly to the Quran and Sunnah and strive to attain certain knowledge of what the Messenger reported and commanded. He must then not abandon what is clear and known for what is ambiguous and unknown. That would be like someone travelling to Mecca along a known road which will undoubtedly take him there if he follows it, only to turn away from it onto an unknown road which he neither knows nor knows where it ends. Such is the case of someone who turns away