follow that the life from which something not alive acquired life is itself alive.”

The reply is that this is false for two reasons.

First, the life that inheres in it is the very life by which it became alive. There is no other life by which it became alive, such that one could speak of one life inhering in it and another making it alive.

Second, if its life is assumed to have been acquired from another life, that other life subsists in a living being who is alive by virtue of it. It is not that life itself is alive; rather, it is the being characterized by life that is alive, not life itself.

Let any reasonable person consider the ultimate conclusions of these philosophers’ investigations into divine science—knowledge of Allah Most High, His names, and His attributes ن—and consider this reasoning with which they oppose the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. This has, however, been discussed at length elsewhere, and this is not the place to elaborate upon it.

People denounced Abū al-Hudhayl al-'Allāf when he said, “Allah is a knower by virtue of knowledge, and His knowledge is His own essence,” and accused him of abandoning reason, even though his statement is less contradictory than theirs.

As for his claim that there is no answer to what necessarily follows from the position of those who affirm the attributes, because the Necessary