does not understand the meanings of the texts, and the liar who distorts words from their proper places. This is the condition of the people of religious innovation, who fall into one of two categories:

Either a man who distorts words from their proper places, speaks according to his own opinion, and interprets the text in a way he attributes to Allah. Such people write the Book with their own hands and say that it is from Allah. They claim that the doctrines they have invented are the truth, what the Messenger brought, what the early generations followed, and so forth. Then they distort the texts that contradict those doctrines. If they do this deliberately, knowing that what they are doing contradicts the Messenger, they are of the same kind as these Jews. This occurs among many heretics, and in certain matters among others as well. As for those whose intention is to follow the Messenger inwardly and outwardly, but who err in what they write and how they interpret, they are not of the same kind.

Nevertheless, their errors have given rise to falsehood of that kind. As the saying goes:

“When a scholar slips, others slip along with him.”

This is the condition of those in this community who adopt mistaken interpretations.

Or an unlettered man who merely follows others, knowing nothing of the Book except what he hears from them or recites himself, and knowing it only through recitation. Allah has censured him for this. It is thus clear that Allah censures those who neither know the meanings of the Quran, nor reflect upon it, nor understand it, just as the Quran explicitly censures them in numerous places. It is therefore impossible to say:

“Most of the Quran, or much of it, is known to no created being beyond mere recitation—neither Gabriel, nor Muhammad, nor the Companions, nor anyone