He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked about the saying of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace):

“Whoever interprets the Quran according to his own opinion, let him take his seat in the Fire.”

“If the commentators’ differing interpretations of a single verse are based on personal opinion, how can one escape this punishment? If they are not based on personal opinion, how did these differences arise, when two contradictory positions cannot both be true? Please give us your ruling.”

He—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—replied:

It should be understood that differences among Quran commentators and others are of two kinds.

The first involves neither opposition nor contradiction; rather, both views may be true. Such differences are simply variations, or differences in the attributes described or the expressions used. Most of the differences reliably reported from the early commentators—the Companions and the Successors—are of this kind. When Allah, glorified be He, mentions a term in the Quran, as in His saying:

“Guide us to the straight path,”

each commentator describes the straight path in terms that indicate some of its attributes, and all these descriptions are true. This is comparable to the names by which Allah, His Messenger, and His Book are known: each name indicates an attribute of the one it names. Thus, some commentators say that “the straight path” is the Book of Allah, or following the Book of Allah.