As for their statement:

“Our knowledge of Him cannot come through reports, because reports lead to knowledge only when a great many people report what they have directly witnessed, and no one reports about Allah on the basis of direct observation.”

This is among the points their opponents dispute. They say:

“Those conveying mass-transmitted reports need not report what they have directly witnessed. Rather, if they report something known to them by necessary knowledge, knowledge of what they report is attained, even if the matter reported is not directly observable.”

Knowledge of Allah may arise as necessary knowledge. If so, knowledge can be attained by accepting the reports of those whose knowledge has arisen in this way. Do you not see that what people report of their own experiences—the pleasure of sexual intercourse and of many foods and drinks, indeed, the pleasure of knowledge, worship, and leadership, as well as the states of intoxication and passionate love, and other inward experiences—becomes known to exist through mass transmission, even to someone who has neither experienced these things personally nor known them necessarily within himself? Yet these are not matters that can be directly observed.

Indeed, people’s unanimous description of a man as learned, just, courageous, generous, scheming, shrewd, or possessing other inner qualities that cannot be known merely through direct observation produces knowledge of those qualities in anyone who receives these mass-transmitted reports, even though the reporters were not reporting from direct observation. The same applies to reports about the injustice of wrongdoers.