Whoever wishes to conduct a debate in accordance with revelation and using sound reason must neither commit himself to an innovated expression nor contradict any rational or scriptural proof. He thus follows the path of the people of the Sunnah and hadith and the leading scholars, who do not endorse either affirmation or negation without qualification, but instead ask:
“What do you mean when you say that everything that can be seen is a body?”
If they explain this to mean that everything that can be seen must have been assembled by someone, or must once have been separate and then brought together, or can be separated, or something similar, they reject the first premise and say:
“These heavens are visible before our eyes, yet we do not know that they were once separate and then assembled. If something that admits of separation can be seen, then something that does not admit of it can all the more possibly be seen. Allah Most High is therefore more deserving of being capable of being seen than the heavens or anything that exists in its own right. For what makes seeing possible cannot lie in nonexistence, but only in existence. The more perfect the existence, the more possible it is for it to be seen, as has been explained at length elsewhere.”
If they say:
“By a composite body, we mean something composed of indivisible atoms, or of matter and form,”
they dispute this and say:
“The claim that the heavens are composed of indivisible atoms, or of matter and form, is a claim that is not conceded or is false.”
They demonstrate the invalidity of the position of those who make this claim, and of those who affirm the existence of the indivisible atom or of matter and form. They say:
“Allah created this observable body as it is. If He assembled it, He assembled it from other bodies. He, glorified be He, creates a body from another body, just as He creates the human being from a lowly fluid. The bones have been fitted into their places in the human body, and He has set the heavenly bodies in the sky. Thus, this is