The Seventh Premise
Exaggeration is a revolutionary. It is like this:
it is a human characteristic to mix imagination with truth by tending to excess in what one takes pleasure in, to overstate something one describes, and to exaggerate something one relates. In consequence, doing good is actually to do evil. Although one is not aware of it, deficiency arises from the excess, corruption from reform, disparagement from praise, and ugliness from beautification. For, From whence they know not mars the beauty arising from the balance and proportion.
Just as to increase the dose of a medicine because you deem it salutary will make the cure injurious; so to show backbiting to be equal to murder or passing water while standing to be equal to adultery due to enjoining the good and deterring from evil in exaggerated terms – although the truth never needs this, or to hold giving one dirhem as charity equal to making the Hajj, is to take murder and adultery lightly and to devalue the Hajj.
In consequence, the preacher should speak both wisely and in reasoned manner. Yes, those preachers whose words are unbalanced cause the eclipse of many luminous truths of religion.
Due to the tendency to exaggerate, it has been added to the shining, unanimously related miracle of the splitting of the moon that the moon descended to earth, entered the Messenger’s (UWBP) pocket then emerged from it. This has both made that sun‑like miracle as faint as the star Suha and eclipsed that moon-like proof of prophethood, and opened the door to the deniers’ pretexts.
In Short: Everyone who loves religion and is enamoured of the truth should content himself with the worth of things [as they are] and not exaggerate and go to excess. For to do so is to decry divine power. It is to be dissatisfied with the perfection and beauty in creation, which caused al‑Ghazali to declare: “There could be nothing better in the sphere of contingency than what exists,” and to belittle them.
Gentle reader! Sometimes comparisons (temsil) serve as proofs (bürhan). See! Just as the value and properties of diamonds, gold, silver, lead, iron, and so on are all different; so the value of the aims of religion and their proofs are all different. If the place of one is the imagination, the place of another is the conscience, and of yet another the inner heart.
If when engaged in commerce someone gives a diamond or a piece of gold instead of a fish‑scale or ten para, he will be judged incompetent and denied right of disposal; or if the reverse is the case, he will rightly be sent packing.
Similarly, those, who lacking discernment, fail to distinguish between the truths of religion and do not accord to each the right and respect it deserves; who do not recognise the stamp of the Shari‘a on each of its ordinances, and even arrest the motion of the components of that vast factory, each on its own axis – they resemble an apprentice who sees a tiny cogwheel in a huge, smoothly‑running machine and because it appears incongruous to his superficial view, is deceived by his arrogance although he has no knowledge of engineering, and attempts to alter its fine-tuning in order to correct it, so overturns the order of the factory and ruins it.
To Conclude: Each of the Shari‘a’s ordinances bears the Lawgiver’s stamp of approval. The stamp has to be read. An ordinance is in need of nothing to give it value over and above the stamp. And it stands in no need whatsoever of the embellishments or interference of the verbose exaggerations of those addicted to excess.
Take note! How ugly in the view of truth are those exaggerators when they proffer advice. For Instance, one of them, not being content with the Shari‘a’s method of restraint, said something in a large gathering to put people off intoxicants, but I was ashamed to write it and crossed it out. You scoundrel, you’re opposing the Shari‘a with these words of yours! Supposing you were faithful to it even, you would still be foolishly faithful. You’re more harmful than the worst enemy.
Conclusion
O you unfair people who try to criticise Islam from outside and from afar! Don’t be deceived! Think and reason! Don’t make do with looking superficially, for those people who are the cause of these pretexts of yours are called “reprehensible religious scholars” (lit. scholars of evil, wickedness – ulema‑i sû’) in the language of the Shari‘a. Look beyond the veil caused by their imbalance and externalist literalness. You’ll see that each truth of Islam is a light‑scattering proof, like a luminous star. It appears within a tapestry stretching from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Indeed, that which proceeds from pre-eternal divine speech will go to post-eternity.
But alas! Due to love of self and taking the part of oneself and exonerating oneself, which arise from egotism and impotence, they blame their own faults on others. They want to exonerate themselves by ascribing something they say or do that might possibly be wrong to some lofty person or esteemed book, or even sometimes to religion and very often to Hadiths, and finally to divine determining. Allah forbid! Darkness cannot come from light. Even if they conceal the stars appearing in their own mirrors, they cannot hide the stars in the sky. It’s only themselves who can’t see them!
Kind sir who objects and opposes! It is a great injustice to regard as proofs doubts arising from misunderstandings or attitudes springing from opposition to the Shari‘a, and to seek pretexts like a child looking for something to cry about or a rancorous enemy seeking revenge, and so to tarnish Islam. For not every attribute a Muslim possesses, has to derive from Islam.