holding fast to something; and what is meant here by ʿiṣmah is Allah’s safeguarding of His prophets from sins and acts of disobedience.

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH) summed up the various views and identified the soundest position, saying:

“The prophets—may Allah’s blessings be upon them—are infallible in everything they report from Allah, exalted is He, and in delivering His messages; the entire ummah agrees on this. For that reason it is obligatory to believe in all that they have brought, as the Most High says:

‘Say, “We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us, and in what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit. If they believe in the same as you have believed, then they are rightly guided; but if they turn away, they are only in schism, and Allah will suffice you against them; He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.”’ ⦗1⦘

And He says:

‘True righteousness is to believe in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the prophets.’ ⦗2⦘

And He says:

‘The Messenger has believed in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and so have the believers. Each one believes in Allah, His angels, His Books and His messengers. “We make no distinction between any of His messengers.” And they say, “We hear and we obey. Grant us Your forgiveness, our Lord; to You is the journey’s end.”’ ⦗3⦘

He continued: “This infallibility affirmed for the prophets is that by which the very purpose of prophethood and messengership is achieved. The prophet is the one who conveys information from Allah, and the messenger is the one whom Allah has sent forth; every messenger is a prophet, though not every prophet is a messenger. Concerning what they transmit from Allah, infallibility is firmly established, and by unanimous agreement of the Muslims no error is allowed to stand in that regard….

“As for infallibility in matters not directly related to conveying the message, scholars disagree: Is it proven by reason or only by revelation? Does it cover both major and minor sins, or only some of them? Is the issue that they are protected from committing a sin in the first place, or merely from being left to persist in it? Or is infallibility required only in the act of conveying revelation? And is freedom from disbelief and sins necessary before a prophet is commissioned, or not?”