—as in His saying, “Those are their wishful hopes”—were shared by all of them. Thus, the unlettered among them cannot be singled out for censure on this account. Their being unlettered has no bearing on such censure, nor does their lack of knowledge of the Book. Rather, someone who knows these hopes to be false deserves greater censure for them than someone who does not know that they are false. Hence, when Allah censured them for these hopes, He spoke generally rather than singling out a particular group. He Most High said:

“They say, ‘None will enter Paradise unless they are Jews or Christians.’ Those are their wishful hopes.”

And so the verse continues.

Moreover, He said:

“They do nothing but conjecture.”

This shows that He censured them for lacking knowledge and having nothing but conjecture. This is the condition of someone ignorant of the meanings of the Book, not someone who knows that he is lying. It is therefore clear that this group is not the group who utter lies and falsehoods. Had that been intended, the wording would have been, “They utter nothing but false hopes,” rather than, “They know nothing of the Book except its recitation.”

Rather, that other group consists of those who distort words from their proper places and twist their tongues when reciting the Book so that you may think what they recite belongs to the Book, although it does not. They say, “This is from Allah,” although it is not from Allah, and they write the Book with their own hands to obtain a paltry price for it. They distort the meanings of the Book and alter its wording for those unfamiliar with it, lying both in their speech and in their writing.

It is established in the two Sahīh collections that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said:

“You will surely follow the ways of those before you, matching them as precisely as one arrow-feather matches another, so that even if they entered a burrow