the Agent has willed for him everything beneficial or most beneficial to him, and has done for him all that He is able to do in that regard. Their discussions of suffering and compensation, reward and punishment, contain contradictions and scandalous absurdities too numerous to count.

This is illustrated by the well-known account of Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s exchange with Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, when he asked him about three brothers. One died before puberty; another reached puberty and disbelieved; and the third reached puberty, believed, and acted righteously. Allah raised the last brother’s rank in Paradise, placed the young child below him in Paradise, and admitted the unbeliever to the Fire.

The young child said to Him, “My Lord, raise me to my brother’s rank.”

He replied, “You do not deserve that. Your brother performed righteous deeds through which he deserved it.”

The child said, “My Lord, You kept him alive until he reached puberty, but caused me to die. Had You kept me alive, I would have done as he did.”

He replied, “I knew that, had you remained alive, you would have disbelieved. So I chose this for you out of kindness to you.”

Then, he said, the unbeliever cried out from the Fire, “My Lord, why did You not cause me to die before puberty, as You did with this one?”

They relate that, when he asked him this, he had no answer.

They have replies to Abū al-Hasan’s argument, the discussion of which belongs elsewhere.

The point here is that Ibn ʿAqīl examined the Muʿtazilah’s explanations of divine purposes and found them unsound. Yet he held that wisdom and purpose must be affirmed in general, contrary to the position that