the words of Allah the Exalted: “Today I have perfected your religion for you” (Qur’an 5:3). For if Allah has perfected the religion, that means nothing of religion remains after what the Messenger ﷺ brought. Yet these innovators have legislated in Allah’s religion things that are not part of it—added litanies, chants, movements, and the like. In reality, they are denying the purport of His statement, “Today I have perfected your religion for you” (5:3), and they are also impugning the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, implicitly accusing him of having left the law incomplete for humankind—far exalted is he from such a charge.

Another entailment of testifying that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah is to believe him in everything he has conveyed. Whatever is authentically reported from him you are obliged to affirm, without opposing it with your own intellect, calculations, or imaginings. If you only believe what your mind already approves, you are not a true believer; you are merely following desire, not guidance. The one who truly believes in the Messenger—peace and blessings be upon him—says about every sound report, “We hear, we believe, and we affirm.” Whoever retorts, “How can this be? How could such a thing occur?” is not a genuine believer.

Therefore we fear for those who subject the Prophet’s statements to the verdict of their own minds. If they accept only what their undoubtedly limited intellects endorse, they have not truly believed in the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, nor have they genuinely borne witness that he is the Messenger of Allah. The weakness of their testimony is exactly proportionate to the doubt they harbor about what he has reported.

A further requirement of the testimony that “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah” is that you must not exaggerate about him by elevating him above the rank Allah assigned him—like those who believe that