his work on speculative theology—when arguing that the world came into being by means of the argument from accidents, well known among the Muʿtazilah and their followers among the Ashʿarīs, Karrāmīs, and others—as follows:

“As for the fourth pillar, this is where the battle is fought and disputes arise: establishing the impossibility of events with no beginning. All adherents of religious communities and followers of the prophets have unanimously agreed that events with no beginning are impossible, whereas the heretical philosophers have affirmed events with no beginning.”

He also said, when discussing the question of events coming to subsist in Allah, after mentioning the Karrāmīs’ position:

“Know that the assimilationists also hold that events subsist in Him, even if they do not state this explicitly. They and the Karrāmīs are thus on an equal footing in affirming a spatial direction and the subsistence of events in the Essence of the Eternal. For they allow coming and going, descending and ascending, and movement from place to place to be attributed to Allah. They say: ‘These things did not exist and then came to exist,’ and this is precisely what an event that comes into being is. They then affirm spatial localization for Him, and that can subsist only in something spatially localized.”

He said:

“They have indeed affirmed events with no beginning.”

He said:

“It is only on this basis that the heretics mount their attack. We have demonstrated its invalidity and shown that the position that the world came into being cannot be established without refuting it.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]

I say: This claim, which this man and others like him report as a consensus of Muslims, or