##### Conclusion

Conclusion

There are three sources of doubts. It is like this: you feign ignorance of what the Lawgiver intends and the guidance that is commensurate with the capacity of people's minds, and you object, uttering the following erroneous statement, which is the breeding ground of all evil suspicions: "The Qur'an, which is the chief component of the Shari'a, comprises three doubtful points."

The First: The Qur'an contains allegorical verses and obscurities, which are opposed to eloquence, and eloquence is the cause of its distinction and is based on clarity of expression.

The Second: The Qur'an is vague and general concerning the physical sciences and this is contrary to guidance and instruction, the true purposes of the Shari'a.

The Third: Some of the Qur'an's literal meanings tend to be contrary to rational proof and so may be opposed to reality, and this is incompatible with verification and guidance, which constitute its method and way.

Brother! Success is from God. I say that these three points which you claim are defects, are not as you imagine. The three of them are rather veracious witnesses to the Qur'an's miraculous inimitability.

Answer to the First Point: You have anyway twice received the implicit answer to this. It is as follows: ordinary people form the majority, and in the Lawgiver's view, the minority follows the majority. For the elite understand and profit from a discourse addressed to the common people, while the opposite is not true. The common people cannot free themselves from what they are familiar with and how they imagine them, and they can comprehend abstract ideas and sheer truths only through the telescope of the imagination. But to see the depictions (lit. forms—suver; sing. suret) of imaginary things and restrict attention to them necessarily gives rise to such impossibilities as their embodiment and having physical dimensions. And then they are seen as actual things rather than mere depictions. For instance, the mass of people can see divine rule over the beings in the cosmos in the form of the sultan's rule on the throne of his dominion, as in "The Most Gracious on the