هُوَ الَّـذِي اَنْزَلَ عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ اٰيَاتٌ مُحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ اُمُّ الْكِتَابِ وَاُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ فَاَمَّا الَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ابْتِغَاءَ الْفِتْنَةِ وَابْتِغَاءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُ اِلَّا اللّٰهُ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ اٰمَنَّا بِهِ كُلٌّ مِنْ عِنْدِ رَبِّنَا وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ اِلَّا اُولُوا الْاَلْبَابِ
"It is He who sent down to you the Book; in it are verses precise in meaning — they are the foundation of the Book — and others unspecific... none knows its true interpretation except Allah. But those firm in knowledge say, 'We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.'"
— Āl-i 'Imrān 3:7
This verse is the classical reference point for why exegetes read the same verse differently. Disagreement here is not treated as a flaw; it arises from the text's layered nature.
A note on the quotations: their originals are in Arabic. This page renders them in Turkish, and the English is translated from that Turkish rendering. Where a quotation is decisive, check it against the Arabic source given with it.
The Main Methodological Disagreement: Composite or Element by Element?
The backbone of the Quranic parables lies in this question: should a parable be broken into its parts, with a counterpart sought for each element (element-by-element simile, tashbīh mufarraq), or does it point as a whole to a single meaning (composite simile, tashbīh murakkab)? In rhetoric, a representational simile (tashbīh tamthīlī) is one whose point of likeness is abstracted not from a single quality but from several elements, which is why the debate bears directly on its limits.
الصحيح الذي عليه علماء البيان لا يتخطونه: أنّ التمثيلين جميعاً من جملة التمثيلات المركبة دون المفرَّقة
"The correct view, which the scholars of rhetoric hold and do not depart from, is that both of these likenesses belong to the class of composite likenesses, not to the analytic ones."
Al-Kashshāf, Q 2:19-20
Verified word for word in two independent checks. Al-Zamakhsharī gives this ruling for the TWO LIKENESSES at Q 2:17-20, the fire and the downpour, and calls it the manly view and the sound school; he says it is not persons likened to a person but a scene likened to a scene.
هو تشبيه هيئة بهيئة هو أيضاً مفرَّق التشبيهات لأجزاء المركب المشبه مع أجزاء المركب المشبه به وذلك أقصى كمال التشبيه التمثيلي
"This is the likening of one whole to another whole; and at the same time it is a likeness in which the parts of the composite subject correspond one by one to the parts of the thing it is likened to, and this is the highest degree of perfection in representational likeness."
Al-Taḥrīr wa-al-tanwīr, Q 24:35
Found consistent in two independent checks. What al-Zamakhsharī says must not be done is, for Ibn ʿĀshūr, the summit of the likeness.
He lists every element-by-element scheme on record for the Light Verse (24:35): that of al-Ghazālī, of Ibn Sīnā, of the Sufis, of Muqātil. For the word 'light' in the opening of the verse, his own preference is the reading of guidance.
Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, Q 24:35
Verified in two independent checks: the four named schemes and al-Rāzī's preference for the opening phrase are explicit in the text. That preference does not cancel the explanations he transmits about the elements of the lamp image.
The chain of doctrine is codified in the rhetorical literature through al-Jurjānī, al-Sakkākī and al-Qazwīnī: al-Jurjānī says that simile is the general term and representation the more specific one; al-Sakkākī stipulates that a simile is called representation when its point is abstracted from more than one thing; al-Qazwīnī simplifies that condition. The debate cuts across school boundaries: the Ashʿarī al-Rāzī and the modern Ibn ʿĀshūr take different paths on particular verses, although both can be counted on the same theological line.