Allah’s religion and benefits from the guidance and knowledge with which Allah has sent me, and the example of one who pays no heed to it and does not accept Allah’s guidance with which I have been sent.”

As for Ibn Hazm’s statement that knowledge may arise in the heart neither by necessity nor through reflection, and his refutation of those who restrict it to these two kinds, a dispute of this sort may be merely verbal.

For someone who rejects this restriction may mean by necessity what arises necessarily from sense perception, whereas the others regard necessary knowledge gained through sense perception as only one kind of necessary knowledge. He may also mean by necessity what a person is compelled to know without reflection being required to conceive it.

The others, however, mean by necessary and self-evident knowledge what a person cannot but know once he has conceived its two terms, whether that conception is itself necessary or not.

Indeed, many people say that all knowledge is necessary in relation to its causes: knowledge obtained through reflection, acquisition, and inference becomes necessary once its causes are present, and a person cannot but know it. This is the view adopted by Abū al-Ma‘ālī and others.

People employ various terminological conventions in this area. Anyone unfamiliar with them supposes that their disagreement is substantive, although it is not.

Thus, some of them identify self-evident knowledge with necessary knowledge, and acquired knowledge with knowledge reached through reflection.

Others distinguish between them, defining necessary knowledge as that which a person is compelled to know without any effort or acquisition on his part, neither in