Conclusion

God is far above our deficient minds laying down rules for His acts or defining their manner. He has sent down in the Qur'an His promise and His threat; we fear His threat and hope for His promise, and anything beyond this is no concern of ours.

Sixth: Deeming good and deeming evil:

He said: "All obligations are known through revelation (sam'). Reason makes nothing obligatory and entails no judgement of good or evil. Knowledge of God Most High is attained through reason, and becomes obligatory through revelation. God Most High said: [illegible]. Nothing whatever is obligatory upon God by reason: neither the good, nor the best, nor grace (lutf)." (65)

These are the most important principles of the Ash'arites and their theological foundations.

And now, we would like to conclude by pointing out that the sects in Islam, as we have presented them, were the bitter fruit the Muslims reaped from turning away from the right path as Islam brought it, and as the righteous predecessors (salaf) and those who followed their example and walked in their guidance held to it. That path is the surrender of heart and mind to God and His Messenger, who did not leave this world until the testimony of heaven came down to the perfection of Islam:

This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favour upon you, and approved Islam for you as religion. But whoever is compelled by hunger, without inclining to sin, then God is indeed Forgiving, Merciful. (66)

Our righteous predecessors believed in its perfection and directed all their efforts to realising this perfection in their words and deeds, and to raising the level of their conduct to the level of the word of Islam, until the Muslims deviated from this upright path. They subjected the Word to reason, and brought the Word down from its height and perfection to the level of their deficient minds. They turned the Word into mere speech, and so they split apart, reviled one another, and their standing weakened and their weight among the nations diminished.

(65) Ibid. 1/93.

(66) Al-Ma'ida: 3.

Indeed God does not change what is in a people until they change what is in themselves. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

Indeed those who have split up their religion and become factions, you have nothing to do with them in anything. Their affair rests ⁽⁶⁸⁾

with God; then He will inform them of what they used to do.

And now..

I hope that the introductions, comparisons and conclusions I have presented have achieved what I set out to clarify: the distinction between milla and nihla in the three religions. It can be summed up by emphasising the essential difference between the place of milla and nihla in Islam and their place in Judaism and Christianity.

For while it has become accepted that the word of man is mixed with the Word of God in the religious heritage of Judaism and Christianity, in a way that makes it impossible to distinguish milla from nihla within it except by relying on a standard outside that heritage, by which one can only weigh probabilities in this distinction, not reach certainty (although, relying on this standard and on an objective examination of the heritage itself, one can affirm with certainty that it has been altered, changed and transformed from its original state, and that nihla, or human opinions, have effaced the face of milla, the word of revelation, within it),

we find, on the contrary, a clear distinction, free of all confusion and obscurity, between milla and nihla, between the word of revelation and the word of man, in Islam. At no moment, from the coming down of revelation until now, have the Muslims confused, in their understanding, their speech, their memory or their writings, the distinction between the Qur'an, which alone represents for them the Word of God as revelation brought it down, and the speech of any human being. From the time it came down, the Qur'an has remained unmixed, in transmission and understanding, in memorisation and writing, with anything of the speech of human beings, which,

(67) Al-Ra'd: 11.

(68) Al-An'am: 159.

however great its speaker, is for the scholars and the common people of the Muslims no more than speech that may be right or wrong, accepted or rejected. And the views of the Islamic sects, their doctrines and their methods of understanding and interpreting the texts, have always remained in the eyes of Muslims nothing more than nihal and claims that may be right or wrong, accepted or rejected, subject in their criticism and evaluation to the word of revelation, which for every Muslim is represented with certainty by nothing but the Noble Qur'an.

On the other hand, while the mixing of milla with nihla, and of the Word of God with the word of man, in the Jewish and Christian religions is the evidence and the justification for judging them to have been altered and changed, their end differing from their beginning, nihla in Islam, even if it clouded the minds of some Muslims in their understanding of the milla, or the religion as revelation brought it down, has not touched its holy Book, which has remained preserved and protected from change and alteration (tahrif). The milla in it has remained distinct and distinguished, with a clarity free of all confusion, from nihla, a nihla that never for a single day acquired the infallibility and sanctity of revelation, unlike the standing and sanctity that nihla acquired in Judaism and Christianity. The Noble Qur'an has remained a supreme standard, alone in its authority to criticise all else in the religious, cultural and moral heritage of the Muslims, and to evaluate that heritage, whose soundness and acceptance depend on the Qur'an's endorsement, or else it meets its inevitable fate of neglect and oblivion. In this distinction lay the evidence and the justification for the judgement that Islam, as a revealed religion, has remained preserved from change, alteration and transformation as on the day it came down; that it is unique among the religions in its Book, which the hand of alteration has not touched and for which every means of preservation, in memory, in writing and on the tongue, has been provided; that it has remained an enduring standard and a lasting witness to the uprightness and the deviation of the Muslims, alone in its authority and supremacy over other books, religions, beliefs and doctrines, and over ideas, words and deeds; and that it will remain for scholars and others a standard by which they distinguish between milla and nihla, between the Word of God and the word of man, at all times.

And our final prayer is: praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, who by His grace guided us to Islam.