the rabble, and others like them who have nothing whatsoever to do with the elite. There is no doubt that their latter generations, like their earlier ones, are free of innovation.

As for the elite, some of them are innovators: they originate an innovation, keep it constantly before their eyes, exert every effort to strengthen it, and make it a principle to which they refer the explicit texts of the Quran and Sunnah. Then people like them in understanding and partisanship follow them; they may revive that innovation, develop further doctrines from it, and ascribe to its originator views that he himself did not uphold. Yet he remains their foremost leader. These are the innovators in the true sense. This is a grave matter: “the heavens almost rupture because of it, the earth splits asunder, and the mountains collapse in devastation”—such as denying the wisdom of Allah Most High, denying that He grants the morally responsible person the capacity to act, claiming that He imposes duties beyond what can be borne, and claiming that He commits every vile act, none of which can be deemed vile when done by Him, and similar doctrines. Some innovations are less grave than these. The true reality of them all is with Allah Most High, and we do not know which of them causes its adherent to become one of the seventy-three sects.

Among people are those who follow such innovators, support them, and increase their numbers through teaching and writing, while inwardly returning to the truth. They have discreetly inserted, in places within those discussions, what refutes them. Perhaps they imagined some base advantage, or found it too difficult to face their own loss of standing and the others’ attacks on their honour; indeed, the harm may even extend to their persons. In short, such a man has recognized truth from falsehood, but has acted confusedly; his reckoning is with Allah, Glorified is He. He may gather him with those whom he loved, according to his outward state, or accept his excuse. One can scarcely find any of these speculative thinkers who has not done this. Yet, by Allah, their evil is great, and their true state may well go entirely unnoticed, for only intelligent people thoroughly versed in the subject perceive the subtle hint that they have inserted. Allah has made such people independent of that hint through their knowledge, and there is little benefit in their knowing that the man recognized the truth but concealed it. Allah is the One whose help is sought.

Among people are those who are not qualified for rigorous investigation and have not been prepared to penetrate realities, yet