be unable to continue. Someone taking such a route may be unable to complete it, or may lose his way after tremendous toil and hardship, even if it poses no danger. If it does pose a danger, he may perish before arriving.

It is clear that anyone who turns to this route and abandons the straight, clear, safe, and easy route is gravely unjust and ignorant.

If, however, we assume that this method is unsound—as those acquainted with its true nature recognize—then it either fails to lead to the desired goal, since reasoning from an unsound proof inevitably entails compound ignorance. Indeed, it may yield neither knowledge nor ignorance. This is the condition of many accomplished speculative thinkers who have followed it.

Or it leads to the opposite of the truth, if the person following it believes some of its false premises to be true. This is the condition of many who have believed it to be valid and, on the strength of its implications, have opposed what is authentically transmitted and what sound reason plainly establishes.

This is the condition of the proponents of innovation among the Muʿtazila and the Jahmiyya, and of those who agree with them in accepting its implications. For this method is the source of misguidance for as many groups of speculative theologians as Allah Most High has willed, as has been explained at length elsewhere. The former remain in simple ignorance, whereas the latter fall into compound ignorance.