As for blameworthy and invalid ta’wīl, it is the interpretation offered by those who distort the texts and introduce religious innovations. They interpret them incorrectly and claim to divert the wording from what it signifies to something else, without evidence requiring this. They claim that its apparent meaning entails an objectionable consequence comparable to what necessarily follows from what they themselves affirm through reason. They then redirect it to meanings comparable to those they have denied it conveys. Thus, what they deny is of the same kind as what they affirm. If what they affirm is true and possible, then so is what they deny; and if what they deny is false and impossible, then so is what they affirm.

Those who reject ta’wīl altogether and cite the words of the Most High:

“And no one knows its interpretation except Allah.”

may suppose that we have been addressed in the Quran with words that no one understands, that have no meaning, or from which nothing can be understood. Besides being false, this is self-contradictory. If we understand nothing from it, we cannot say that it has an interpretation that either contradicts or accords with its apparent meaning; for it may have a valid meaning. That valid meaning does not contradict any apparent meaning known to us, since, according to their claim, it has no apparent meaning. Its signification of that meaning would therefore not contradict an apparent meaning, and so would not constitute ta’wīl.

Nor, on this assumption, may we deny that it signifies meanings unknown to us, for we may not know the meanings it signifies. Moreover, if we do not understand the wording and what it signifies, we are even less likely to know the meanings it does not signify. This is because wording indicates what is intended by it more strongly than it indicates what is not intended by it. Thus, if the wording gives no indication of a meaning