Disagreement among the people of the faiths and God's sunna in creation

Disagreement and fighting among the followers of the messengers occurred. In the verse of al-Baqara 253 that speaks of this, Muhammad Rashid Rida follows the reading of the Master Imam Muhammad Abduh: this is God's law in the creation of a reasoning, self-acquiring human being, and not a compulsion that would void the meaning of the verse. ^{1 2}

Rida notes that taking the verse at face value, as Tafsir al-Jalalayn and similar works understand it, makes it a doctrine of compulsion that religion or the law should not accept, because it says God willed them to be as they were. He rejects this reading. ^{1 2}

Rida says God did not create people with limited equal powers like animals. He gave them reason and thought, made their advancement something acquired that begins weak and grows stronger through upbringing and teaching, and made the guidance of religion a matter of choice. Hence disagreement: some take religion as it is, and others let their desires govern its interpretation. ²

Rida notes that the Jews disagreed and fought, and that the Christians split one of their doctrines into branches that fight one another. He holds that Muslims have more reason than anyone to beware of such disagreement, given how many things God has forbidden them. ²