speculative theologians—people given to injustice and ignorance—place the report of al-Ṣiddīq (Abu Bakr), al-Fārūq (‘Umar), and Ubayy ibn Kaʿb on the same level as the reports of ordinary individuals, even though the stark difference between the two sets of narrators is perfectly clear. Who could be more unjust than the one who equates a solitary report transmitted by a Companion with a solitary report related by a common person, claiming that neither yields certain knowledge? It is as though he were also claiming that the two groups are equal in knowledge, religiosity, and virtue.

He said (2/379):
The very reason they allege that “a solitary hadith does not convey knowledge” is their ignorance of the Sunnah.

Thus, when they say, “His ﷺ reports and the sound hadiths do not impart knowledge,” they are really informing us about themselves—that they have failed to derive knowledge from them. In that personal admission they are truthful; but they are lying when they claim that the hadiths do not impart knowledge to the people of hadith and the Sunnah.

He also said (2/432): Because they have not acquired the avenues of certainty that Ahl al-Sunnah have acquired, their statement “We did not gain knowledge from them” in no way proves that such knowledge cannot be gained at all.

This resembles someone trying to prove that a person who actually experiences something and is fully aware of it does not, in fact, experience it or know it. It is like a man who feels pain or pleasure, love or hatred, only to have another rise up and attempt to demonstrate—with a host of specious arguments—that he is neither hurting nor delighted, neither loving nor hating, the sum of which amounts to: “I did not feel what you felt; had it been real, both you and I would have shared in it.” Such reasoning is sheer falsehood. How apt, then, are the poet’s words:

I say to the critic, so certain of his blame:
Taste passion—then, if you can, keep blaming.