the truth and that they made it clear, while recognizing that the messengers are the most knowledgeable of all creation concerning the truth. They are truthful, and their truthfulness is attested: they knew the truth and made it clear. Whoever says that they lied for the sake of some benefit is a brother to those who reject the messengers. Yet, having seen the good and justice they brought about in the world, he could not say that they lied in pursuit of supremacy and corruption. Instead, he said that they lied for the benefit of creation, as is related of Ibn al-Tūmart and others like him.

For this reason, these people distinguish between a prophet and a sorcerer only in terms of good intent: the prophet intends good, whereas the sorcerer intends evil. Otherwise, both perform extraordinary feats which, in their view, arise from powers of the soul, and they regard both as liars. The sorcerer, however, lies in pursuit of supremacy and corruption, whereas the prophet, they claim, lies for the sake of some benefit, since he could not establish justice among people without resorting to some form of lying.

Those among them who knew that prophethood is incompatible with lying about Allah, and that a prophet can only be truthful, said that the messengers did not make the truth clear. Had they merely said that the messengers remained silent rather than explaining it, that would have been less heretical. But instead they said that the messengers made statements whose apparent meaning conveyed falsehood to people, without making the truth clear to them. In their view, the messengers thus combined two things: concealing a truth they did not explain, and presenting statements that indicated falsehood, even though they did not intend that falsehood. They therefore treated the messengers’ words as a kind of equivocal speech in which the speaker intends a true meaning, but the listener understands nothing but falsehood.

To say that they intended equivocation is less heretical than to say that they intended to lie.