Among the later writers there were some who framed the issue with an offensive label, saying:

“It is impermissible for Allah to speak words and intend nothing by them—contrary to the ḥashwiyyah.”

Yet no Muslim has ever claimed that Allah utters speech devoid of meaning. The actual debate is whether He may speak words whose meaning is not understood. The gulf between denying meaning on the part of the Speaker and denying comprehension on the part of the hearer is immense.

This critic then advanced an argument that conflicts with his own principles, declaring: “That would be pointless play, and pointless play is impossible for Allah.” According to his theology, however, nothing is inherently reprehensible when ascribed to Allah; He may do whatever He wills. He therefore has no grounds to say, “Pointless play is a defect, and defects are impossible for Him,” for the dispute concerns the letters themselves, which he regards as created acts, and any act, in his view, may contain every attribute. Thus neither sound transmission nor clear reason supports his assertion.

The root of the discord between the two camps—the very snare that has trapped their minds—is this: those who claim to practice tawʾīl have erred in imagining, first, that scholars possess definite knowledge of the tawʾīl, and second, that their own tawʾīl—nothing but a distortion of words from their proper places—is that very tawʾīl. The early generations, by virtue of their mastery of the Quran and the sunnah, their sound intellects, and their familiarity with the speech of the Salaf and the Arabs, knew with certainty that the tawʾīl asserted by these people is not the meaning of the Quran. They have twisted the words from their contexts and have become varying degrees of deviation—ranging from the Qaramita and the Bāṭiniyyah, who allegorically reinterpret both reports and commands, to the Sabians