The treatise portrays two men crossing a desert: one humble, one arrogant. The humble one takes on the name and protection of a powerful tribal chief; because of this he passes safely through dangerous places, is spared by a bandit merely by invoking the chief's name, and is received with respect at wells and mountain passes. The arrogant one refuses to take the chief's name; throughout his journey he suffers indescribable hardship, trembles constantly, is reduced to begging, and ends up both humiliated and disgraced.

In a second illustration, the treatise contrasts a man acting alone, on his own strength, with one carrying out a task in the name of the state or an authority: the one relying only on himself has a very limited reach and struggles to compel others to act, while the one acting in the authority's name, backed by it, operates with wide license — everyone obeys him, and he accomplishes with ease what he could never do alone. The author extends this to the whole of creation: no created being is self-sufficient; everything acts by God's command.

Fenârî defines "rejected" (rajīm) broadly — not merely "expelled," but as a being stoned by the angels each time it attempts to ascend, one that constantly drags people into harm. On the ruling for the refuge formula itself, he reports that the majority view holds it is not obligatory, some scholars consider it obligatory during recitation, and another view requires it at least once in a lifetime.

Fenârî distinguishes the "bā" of the refuge formula from the "bā" of the basmala: the first repels Satan (a "bā of overpowering"), the second draws the servant near the Lord (a "bā of union"). He reads the letter's form and low-set dot as a symbol of humility; as a preposition it links the name "Allah" to "ar-Raḥmān," and — being a labial letter — he connects it to the first letter of humanity's "yes" (balā) at the primordial covenant, drawing four layers of meaning (Name, Essence, Majesty, Beauty) from a single letter.

Per the majority view Fenârî reports, the basmala is an independent verse but is not the opening verse of the Fātiḥa or of any other sūrah — it was placed in the Qur'an to separate sūrahs and as a source of blessing. He also gives the concrete arithmetic behind the Prophet's description of the Fātiḥa as "seven verses": if the basmala counts as a verse, it is verse one; if not, the count of seven is reached instead by splitting the end of verse six and verse seven into two separate verses.

Fenârî links the hadith "prayer is the believer's ascension" to the refuge-basmala pair: prayer's outward form is the servant physically turning from the world toward God; its inward form is first seeking refuge from Satan, then fully surrendering to Him through His most comprehensive name. The repetition of prayer cycles reinforces this surrender. In the book's closing section, this frame is extended to the whole sūrah, presented as a "mirror."

Mâturīdī grounds his view that the basmala is an independent Qur'anic verse (yet not counted among the Fātiḥa's own verses) in a hadith: the Prophet tells Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, "I will teach you a sūrah unlike any given to anyone before Solomon," then asks, "Which verse does the Qur'an begin with?" When Ubayy answers "Bismillāhi 'r-Raḥmāni 'r-Raḥīm," the Prophet confirms, "That is the very verse I meant." For Mâturīdī, this proves both that the basmala is genuinely a verse, and that it stands independently as the Qur'an's own key rather than as part of the sūrah itself — otherwise the Prophet would have taught Ubayy not a single verse but an entire hundred-plus-verse sūrah.

Mâturīdī cites a second proof, a sacred hadith (ḥadīth qudsī): God declares He divided the prayer (the Fātiḥa) between Himself and His servant into two halves — once the servant recites "al-Ḥamdu lillāh...māliki yawmi 'd-dīn" (three verses), that first half belongs to Him, and everything from "ihdinā" onward belongs to the servant. Mâturīdī infers from this division that the sūrah can only split evenly this way if the basmala is not counted as one of its verses — the arithmetic itself confirms the basmala is not one of the Fātiḥa's seven.

Per Rāzī, Imam Shāfiʿī holds that the basmala is literally the Fātiḥa's own opening verse, obligatory to recite together with the sūrah in prayer; Zemahşerî likewise reports, citing the Meccan and Kūfan reciters, that the basmala is an independent verse at the head of EVERY sūrah — evidenced by the fact that the earliest Muslims wrote into the muṣḥaf only what belonged to the Qur'an, never non-Qur'anic formulas like "āmīn." Imam Mālik and al-Awzāʿī, by contrast, hold that — apart from the exception in Sūrat an-Naml — the basmala is not a verse at the head of any sūrah at all.