agreed with them among the Khārijites, the later Shia, and the later Asharīs.
The Mutazilites and the philosophers hold two views on this question.
Indeed, this is also what is reported from most philosophers, as stated by Abū al-Walīd Ibn Rushd the grandson. He was among the most faithful adherents to the doctrines of the Peripatetics—Aristotle and his followers—and among those most devoted to studying these doctrines, agreeing with them, and explaining where Ibn Sīnā and others like him departed from them. He even wrote Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), defending his fellow philosophers and responding to Abū Hāmid’s book, Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). Yet Abū Hāmid’s own agreement with the philosophers on many points is well known, although it is said that he renounced this and ultimately settled on drawing his knowledge from the approach of the scholars of hadith, after despairing of attaining what he sought through the approaches of the theologians, the philosophical thinkers, and the Sufis as well.
The point is that Ibn Rushd defends the Peripatetic philosophers—Aristotle and his followers—as far as possible. Elsewhere, we have discussed his statements and those of Abū Hāmid, explained the soundness of Abū Hāmid’s refutation of the philosophical thinkers’ errors, and shown how other lines of argument strengthen those parts of his refutation that they deemed weak. For a refutation of the proponents of falsehood can be comprehensive only when the Sunnah is followed in every respect. Otherwise, whoever follows the Sunnah in one respect but departs from it in another gives his opponents an opening precisely where he has departed from the Sunnah. They argue against him using those premises contrary to the Sunnah on which he has agreed with them.
I have reflected on the arguments generally used by the proponents of falsehood against those nearer to the truth than themselves, and found that the argument for falsehood is strong only because they have forsaken the truth that