fabricators; to abolish the religious laws known to be part of Islam and replace them with misguiding innovations(1); and for anyone who would do so(2) to use this as a means to establish the religion of the heretics, who inwardly adhere to the doctrine of the philosophers while outwardly professing Islam, though they are deeper in unbelief than the Jews and Christians—among the other aims of those steeped in ignorance and wrongdoing, who plot(3) against Islam and its people—then it is not permissible for the mufti to issue a ruling that(4) leads to such evils.

If mentioning the Rightly Guided Caliphs is the means [by which] the prescribed objectives(5) are achieved in circumstances such as these, then it becomes prescribed in such circumstances, even though it is neither an obligation incumbent in an absolute sense nor one of the sunnah practices consistently observed in(6) every time and place. Similarly, when the Muslim and unbeliever armies each have their own distinctive emblem, it is obligatory in such circumstances to display the emblem of Islam rather than the emblem of unbelief, because this is obligatory(7) at every time and place. Thus, if the obligations of Islamic law cannot be upheld except by openly mentioning the caliphs, and if omitting their mention would cause the emblem of the people of innovation and misguidance to prevail, mentioning them becomes prescribed in circumstances such as these. As for matters