—from everyone else—and they toil unremittingly, wearing themselves out in rebutting them. They keep repeating: “their books and our books, their imams and our imams, their school and our school,” even though the Prophet is one, the Qur’an is one, and the Lord is one. What is binding upon everyone is to submit to a single common word, to obey none but the Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—never to place alongside him anyone whose statements are treated like his own texts, and not to take one another as lords apart from Allah. If they were to unite upon this, if each of them yielded to whoever calls him to Allah and His Messenger, and if they all referred their disputes to the Sunnah and the reports of the Companions, disagreements would dwindle, though they would never vanish completely from the earth.

For this reason you will find that the People of the Sunnah and Hadith are those who disagree the least; there is no group on earth that enjoys greater harmony and fewer internal disputes than they, because they have built upon this foundation. Conversely, the farther a faction strays from the Hadith, the harsher and more numerous its internal conflicts become. Whoever rejects the truth finds his own affairs confused; everything becomes tangled, the path of what is right grows obscure, and he no longer knows where to turn—just as the Most High said: “Nay, they have denied the truth when it came to them, so they are in confusing disarray” (Qaf 50:5).

He also said ⦗2/347⦘:

“We are not claiming that Allah has made it obligatory for every one of His creatures to know the proof for the truth in every single matter of the religion, whether minute or great. Rather, we have only rejected what the imams—and before them the Companions and Successors—rejected: the innovations that arose in Islam after the virtuous centuries had passed, in the blameworthy fourth century…”