in their view, establishing the existence of the Maker does not depend on this method. Indeed, al-Ash'arī explicitly stated in his Epistle to the People of the Frontier—as did others—that this is not the method of the prophets and their followers; rather, it is forbidden in their religion. Yet al-Ash'arī does not regard this method as invalid. Instead, he says:
“It is censured by revelation, even though it is rationally sound.”
He himself followed an abbreviated version of this method, establishing that the human being came into being on the grounds that human existence necessarily entails temporally occurring events, and that whatever is never free of such events must itself have come into being. He also agreed with them that what is known to come into being consists of accidents, such as conjunction and separation, and that, in the animals, plants, and minerals that are created, only their accidents come into being, not their substances.
Likewise, al-Khattābī and a group who shared his position censured this theological method, as al-Ash'arī had done, while agreeing that it was valid.
The majority of leading scholars and rational thinkers, however, regard it as invalid. Anyone capable of rational inquiry and inference can recognize this upon considering the early generations of the Muslim community, its leading scholars, and the majority of its members. They all believed in Allah and His Messenger, yet they did not base their faith on establishing that bodies came into being. Indeed, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the Messenger and his Companions knows that they did not make knowledge of his truthfulness depend on the doctrine that bodies came into being. Neither the Quran nor the Sunnah, nor the statements of any of the early generations or leading scholars, even mentions the doctrine of the temporal origination or contingency of bodies, let alone states that faith in Allah and His Messenger can be attained only through it. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.
What matters here is that the view that the first obligation is to pursue rational inquiry through