that believing the Messenger does not depend upon it.

The sole purpose here is to refute the claim that giving precedence to transmitted revelation over conflicting reason undermines the very reason by which the truth of revelation is established. It has become clear that the falsity of this claim is necessarily evident from religion and from ordinary human experience, and that those who believed in the Messenger and knew him to be truthful did not depend upon these propositions for their knowledge.

An argument that applies to both groups is the following:

Neither the people of reason who heard the Quran nor the unbelievers among the polytheists and the People of the Book in earlier ages attacked it or objected to it on the grounds that these accounts of Allah’s attributes contradicted clear reason. Had knowledge of the opposite been firmly established in human minds, it would ordinarily have been impossible for this discourse to spread throughout the East and West, and for its champion to prevail over its enemy through compelling proof and the conquering sword, while its accounts contradicted clear reason, without a single rational person noticing this—whether to attack it or to raise a difficulty.

Moreover, if these rational arguments were sound, there would have been ample motivation and incentive to discover and derive them, for they concern the noblest object of inquiry and knowledge of Him, whose attributes people are deeply motivated to understand, both in what is denied and in what is affirmed.

Thus, if these methods leading to negation were sound methods knowable through reason, then, given a fully operative motive, they would necessarily have been discovered; for with complete ability