exclusively,” he includes those who failed to oppose wrongdoing despite being able to do so. It may also mean that they are punished in this world but resurrected according to their intentions, like the army that marches against the House and is swallowed up in its entirety, while anyone compelled to accompany it will be gathered according to his intention.

The second answer:

It is to affirm definitively that the ambiguity mentioned in the Quran is the intrinsic ambiguity inseparable from these passages, whose ultimate reality none but Allah knows. As for relative ambiguity, when people use the term in this sense, they mean that they discussed passages whose meaning was unclear and difficult for some people, and that the Jahmiyyah based their arguments on what they found unclear and difficult—even if it did not belong to those ambiguous passages whose ultimate reality none but Allah knows. Something may often be unclear to one person without being unclear to another.

Imam Ahmad’s words may also be understood as referring exclusively to what is intrinsically and necessarily ambiguous, without intending relative ambiguity in any part of his statement. His words, “interpreted it contrary to its true import,” mean: contrary to the reality to which it actually refers, even though none but Allah knows that reality. Those endowed with knowledge know that this is the reality intended, so the passage is no longer obscure to them or open to another meaning.

For this reason, ambiguity occurs in statements concerning either Allah or the Hereafter, and none but Allah knows the ultimate reality of all this. Indeed, the clear passages of the Quran may also be said to have an ultimate reality, just as the ambiguous passages do. As He says:

“Are they waiting for anything but its fulfillment?”

Nevertheless, none but Allah knows the timing and manner of that fulfillment. It may instead be said that this ultimate reality pertains to the ambiguous passages, since they concern the promise