The point here is that when the people of innovation presented the imams of the Sunnah, such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others, with ambiguous terms such as “body,” “substance,” “spatial location,” and the like, they would agree neither to affirm them unconditionally nor to deny them unconditionally. The people of innovation, by contrast, introduced terms and meanings involving either negation or affirmation, and made them the definitive rational foundation that must be believed and built upon. They then examined the Quran and the Sunnah: whatever they could reinterpret to fit their own position, they reinterpreted; otherwise, they said, “These are ambiguous, problematic expressions whose intended meaning we do not know.”

Thus, they made their innovations a definitive foundation and made what the Messenger brought subordinate to it, treating it as problematic whenever it did not accord with that foundation. This is the approach of the Jahmiyyah, the Qadariyyah, and their like, as well as that of the heretics among the esoteric philosophers. All their books follow this method. Recognizing the difference between these two approaches is among the most important means of distinguishing the straight path with which Allah sent His Messenger from the paths that oppose it.

The same principle applies to scholarly questions of jurisprudence, questions concerning the deeds of the heart and their realities, and other matters. Newly introduced terms and meanings, as well as terms and meanings admitting more than one interpretation, have entered all these fields. It is therefore obligatory to make the Book and wisdom that Allah has revealed the foundation in all these matters, then refer people’s statements back to that foundation, and clarify which meanings contained in ambiguous expressions accord with the Quran and the Sunnah and are therefore to be accepted, and which meanings they contain