innovation according to the early generations and the leading scholars. The majority of scholars know that their principles are innovations in the revealed law. Many people, however, suppose that they are rationally sound. As for the most discerning leading scholars and those who follow them, they know that these principles are rationally false, innovated in the revealed law, and contrary to what the Messenger brought.

Accordingly, if error in the rational issues alleged to be the foundations of religion constitutes unbelief (1), then those who follow these paths—which are rationally false and innovated in the revealed law—are the unbelievers, not those who oppose them. If error in these issues does not constitute unbelief, then those who oppose them cannot be declared unbelievers on account of them. Thus, on either supposition, it is established that such a person is not an unbeliever according to the judgment of Allah and His Messenger.

It is characteristic of the people of innovation to introduce doctrines that they make obligatory in religion. Indeed, they make them part of the indispensable faith, declare anyone who disagrees with them over these doctrines an unbeliever, and deem his blood lawful, as do the Khawārij, the Jahmiyya, the Rāfida, the Mu‘tazila, and others. Ahl al-Sunnah, by contrast, neither introduce doctrines nor declare someone an unbeliever when he exercises independent judgment and errs—even if that opponent declares them unbelievers and deems their blood lawful. Thus, the Companions did not declare the Khawārij unbelievers, even though the Khawārij declared Uthman, Ali, and their supporters unbelievers and deemed the blood of Muslims who opposed them lawful.

The pronouncements of these speculative theologians on these issues—declaring someone correct or mistaken, deeming him sinful or not (2), and declaring him an unbeliever or not—stem from their having based themselves upon the two aforementioned positions:

The position of the Qadariyya, who maintain that everyone who engages in inferential reasoning is capable of knowing the truth, and so every person who