This view—although al-Sālihī, al-Ash‘arī in many of his books, and most of his followers followed him in holding it—is among the most unsound views and the furthest from correctness. We have explained this elsewhere, when discussing what constitutes faith, its capacity to increase and decrease, and the disagreements people have concerning this.

[The Second Ground]

As for the second premise: even if the soul’s perfection lay in knowledge alone, this would not mean just any knowledge of just any object. Rather, it would mean the indispensable knowledge: knowledge of Allah. These people, however, supposed that it meant knowledge of being as such, and supposed that the world was beginningless and everlasting. Accordingly, if a person attained knowledge of beginningless and everlasting being, his soul would be perfected.

Abū Ya‘qūb al-Sijistānī and other leading figures among the philosophers and the esotericists based their doctrines on this, as did philosophers like al-Fārābī and others.

Although Ibn Sīnā was closer to Islam than they were, he nevertheless had his own share of heresy.

Abū Hāmid, although he sometimes followed their approach, did not regard knowledge of being alone as a means of attaining felicity; rather, he located this in knowledge of Allah. In some of his books, however, he might say that it is knowledge of things that endure—and this is their position.

Whoever says that the world is beginningless and everlasting adopts their position. But whoever says that everything other than Allah was nonexistent and then came into existence is not thereby committed to it.

Ibn ‘Arabī and Ibn