knew even a little of his doctrine and had gained the slightest acquaintance with it.”

[Ibn Taymiyya’s Commentary]

I say:

One might say: What Judge Abū Bakr has stated does not constitute a defense of al-Ash‘arī. Rather, al-Ash‘arī’s statement is sound in itself and has no need of what he has said.

This becomes clear from two considerations:

First: Al-Ash‘arī’s statement does not offer a proof for this premise, which the judge regards as requiring inference: namely, that an act depends upon an agent and that a created thing must have a creator.

Rather, al-Ash‘arī simply stated this premise without qualification and treated it as conceded. No one of any account—no one whose views carry weight—has disputed it. Hence, no one among the adherents of the recognized schools of thought is known to have disputed it.

As for the judge’s statement that many of the Dahriyya and the philosophers say, “It is originated without an originator,” this view is reported only from a small group whose members are unknown. Al-Shahrastānī and others have interpreted this as meaning that the cause of its coming into existence was a chance occurrence, not that they denied the Maker. On that interpretation, they would have affirmed an agent without affirming a cause for its coming into existence.