The Root from Which the People’s Dispute over Divine Speech Branches

The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—has made clear in this book and in his other writings that the point from which the entire controversy arose is the speculative theology (kalām) that the early Muslims condemned and reproached. This kalām deals with ambiguous matters that mingle truth with falsehood: some of it accords with both reason and revelation, while some of it contradicts them. One group seized the side of negation, thereby denying both truth and falsehood; another embraced affirmation, thereby asserting both truth and falsehood. Taken together, their discourse runs counter to the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the salaf. Any statement that conflicts with these sources is false, and nothing opposes them except what is also contrary to sound reason and authentic transmission.

When the theologians debated whether the universe is created and how to establish the existence of the Creator, the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and other kalām schools that followed their lead argued from the premise that whatever is devoid of events must itself be an event.

Those who used this premise to prove that physical bodies are originated went on to say: “Bodies are never free of events, and whatever is never free of events is originated.”

They then employed various methods to substantiate the first premise.

• At times they contended that bodies are never without motion and rest, and that both are events.
• At other times they contended that bodies are never without combination and separation, and that both are events.
• Yet at other times they contended that bodies are never without the four states—combination, separation, motion, and rest—and that all four are events.

These are the lines of argument adopted by the Muʿtazilah and those who agree with them in claiming that bodies are never devoid of one accident or another.