the interruption of the normal order is, in your view, not impossible, you are compelled to give the following reply: “We know with certitude that such an interruption has never taken place.”

Once you grant that this is necessary knowledge—and that knowing its implication for the claimant’s veracity is likewise necessary—then the illustration I offered becomes decisive: a king dispatches an envoy, and the envoy says, “If you are truthful, violate your usual protocol by standing and then sitting.” The king immediately does so at the envoy’s request, and that necessarily yields certain knowledge of the envoy’s truthfulness.

Someone may object to you: “With a king we are acquainted with his custom, and we know he acted thus to confirm the envoy. But according to you, the Lord creates nothing for the sake of something else.”

You answer: “Rather, He brings one thing into existence simultaneously with another—just as He does with ordinary phenomena—and the miracle belongs to that class.”

It is then said to you: “Customary phenomena become known through repeated occurrence.”

You reply: “We can know this without repetition,” and you classify it under dalāla waḍʿiyya (conventional signification), like the way a word signifies the speaker’s intention.

You add: “We may apprehend His intent necessarily, without any prior agreement." These are the necessary kinds of knowledge by which, you claim, the messenger’s truthfulness is recognized.

Yet if that is truly the case, the majority of people say: “You have not accepted its implications—namely, that He acts for a specific purpose.” They further say: “Affirming that He created the miracle to verify the messenger while also asserting that He creates nothing for the sake of anything else is a contradiction.”

You respond: “Necessary knowledge does not require knowing that He does such-and-such for the sake of such-and-such.” Then it is said