the flagrantly sinful person as a believer.

He has stated unambiguously that the soul’s speech is established only together with knowledge, and that it is realized in proportion to one’s conviction. This is an explicit admission that it cannot exist when knowledge is absent (1) and that it cannot arise contrary to what one actually believes. That stands in direct contradiction to the argument by which they proved the existence of an inner speech distinct from knowledge.

His associate (2) Abū’l-Qāsim al-Anṣārī—teacher of al-Shahrastānī—remarked in his commentary on al-Irshād, after recounting the positions of the Khārijites, the Mu‘tazilah, and the Karrāmiyyah:

“As for the doctrine (3) of our school, the scholars of rigorous investigation among the ḥadīth specialists and the theologians are agreed that faith is affirmation (taṣdīq), and this was also the view of our teacher Abū’l-Ḥasan. He nevertheless gave two different explanations of what affirmation means. On one occasion he said: it is the knowledge of His existence, His pre-eternity, and His divinity (4). On another he said: affirmation is an utterance within the soul, yet it necessarily entails knowledge and cannot exist without it. This is the position favored by the Qāḍī, for truth and falsehood, affirmation and denial, are more fittingly attributed to statements. Accordingly, affirmation is an inward utterance that is expressed by the tongue; and because that verbal expression conveys the inward affirmation, it too is called affirmation. Such is what our master, the Imām, has transmitted.”

I say: Accordingly, two views have been reported from Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī: