just as they know that two identical things are identical and that things which differ are indeed different—meaning a difference of variety, not one of opposition or mutual contradiction, for the word (ikhtilāf, “difference”) can be used for either sense.

These self-evident rational judgments, whether in matters of knowledge or of practice, are the very ones whose denial Allah condemns when He says:

“They will say, ‘If only we had listened or used our reason, we would not have been among the people of the Blaze.’” ⦗67:10⦘

and His words:

“Have they not traveled through the land so that they might have hearts with which to reason or ears with which to hear?” ⦗22:46⦘

As for what some people label (maʿqūlāt, “rational proofs”) even though many intelligent thinkers reject them—such as the claim that all corporeal bodies are alike, that accidents endure, that bodies are composed of indivisible atoms which admit of no division, or of prime matter and form; that an infinite series of successive events, one after another, is impossible—whether in both past and future or in the past only; that universals exist outside the mind as self-subsisting substances; that there exists an eternal duration or a prime matter which is an incorporeal substance existing in its own right; that a self-subsisting substance could exist which cannot be pointed to, and similar notions—these are merely ideas that some dialecticians choose to count as “rational truths.”