They may therefore be told:

“The reverse of what you have stated is more appropriate, for classifying someone as an unbeliever or a transgressor is a matter of revealed law, not a judgment that reason can reach independently.”

Later, he said:

“Accordingly, if error in rational questions said to constitute the fundamentals of religion amounts to unbelief, then those who follow these methods—which are rationally unsound and religious innovations—are the unbelievers, not those who disagree with them. If error in these questions does not amount to unbelief, then those who disagree with them are not unbelievers. Thus, on either assumption, their opponent is not an unbeliever according to the judgment of Allah and His Messenger.

“Yet it is characteristic of the people of innovation to invent doctrines that they make obligatory in religion. Indeed, they make them an indispensable part of faith, declare anyone who disagrees with them an unbeliever, and deem it lawful to shed his blood. Such is the conduct of the Khawārij, the Jahmiyyah, the Rāfidah, the Muʿtazilah, and others.

“The people of the Sunnah, however, do not invent doctrines, nor do they declare someone an unbeliever for exercising independent judgment and reaching an erroneous conclusion, even if he opposes them and considers it lawful to shed their blood. Likewise, the Companions did not declare the Khawārij unbelievers, despite the latter’s declaring ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, and their supporters unbelievers and considering it lawful to shed the blood of Muslims who disagreed with them.

“What these speculative theologians say concerning these questions—judging people correct or mistaken, sinful or free of sin, unbelievers or not unbelievers—stems from their reliance on the two positions mentioned earlier: the position of the Qadariyyah, who hold that everyone who reasons from evidence is capable of knowing the truth