that he said:

“Faith has sixty-odd or seventy-odd branches. The highest is saying, ‘There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah,’ and the lowest is removing something harmful from the road. Modesty is a branch of faith.”

The point is that knowing what the Messenger brought and what he intended by the wording of the Quran and hadith is the foundation of knowledge, faith, happiness, and salvation. Next comes knowing what people have said on these matters, so that one can distinguish meanings consistent with the Messenger’s teaching from those that contradict it.

Terms are of two kinds: those found in the speech of Allah and His Messenger, and those not found in their speech. One should understand the meaning of the first kind and make that meaning the foundation, then ascertain what people mean by the second kind and assess it against the first.

This is the way of those who follow guidance and the Sunnah. Those who follow misguidance and innovation take the opposite approach: they make the terms they have introduced, and their meanings, the foundation, subordinating what Allah and His Messenger have said to their own formulations. Through reinterpretation and distortion, they force the revealed words to conform to their own meanings. They say, “We interpret the Quran through reason and language.” What they mean is that they adopt a meaning on the basis of their own reasoning and opinion, then interpret the Quran accordingly, using whatever interpretations and explanations they can devise, which involve displacing words from their proper meanings. Hence Imam Ahmad said: “Most of people’s errors arise from reinterpretation and analogical reasoning.”

He also said: “Anyone speaking on jurisprudence should avoid these two foundations: ambiguous formulations and analogical reasoning.” This approach is shared by all proponents of innovation, great and small.