to single out creed for exclusion from that duty, even though creed is clearly embraced by the general wording of those verses? To reserve the verses for legal rulings while barring them from doctrinal matters is an unwarranted restriction—and whatever rests on an unwarranted restriction is itself invalid.

An Objection and Its Reply

A specious argument was first raised against them, and in time it crystallised into a fixed belief: a solitary report, they claim, yields nothing but conjecture—by which they mean a predominant probability. Such probability, they readily admit, must be acted upon in legal rulings by unanimous agreement; yet they maintain that it may not be accepted in matters of the unseen and the theoretical issues that constitute creed. Even if, for the sake of discussion, we granted their sweeping assertion that “a solitary report yields only conjecture,” we would still ask: on what basis do you draw this distinction? What proof do you have that a solitary report is inadmissible in creed?

Some contemporaries have invoked as evidence the Almighty’s words about the idolaters: “They follow nothing but conjecture and the urges of their souls” (Al-Najm 23), and His statement, “Indeed, conjecture is of no avail against the truth whatsoever” (Al-Najm 36), and similar verses in which Allah censures the polytheists for following conjecture. What these arguers have overlooked is that the “conjecture” condemned in these passages is not the well-founded probability conveyed by a solitary report—whose acceptance is obligatory by consensus—but mere doubt, sheer guesswork. As the lexicons al-Nihāyah, Lisān al-ʿArab, and others explain: “ẓann: a doubt that arises concerning a matter, which a person then treats as fact and judges by.”