and reason, and uses those departures as grounds for arguing against them on the matters in which they disputed with him and agreed with the religion of the Muslims. This is what his brethren among the Bātiniyyah (esotericists) did, such as the author of al-Aqālīd al-Malakūtiyyah and others like him. They approached each group among those who face the qiblah, taking from it the accepted premises on which it agreed with them, but in which that group had erred. Upon these they built the conclusions those premises entailed, which would take those groups outside the religion of the Muslims. They used this reasoning in debating the Muʿtazilah and others like them.

For example, they said to the Muʿtazilah:

“You have conceded to us that Allah must not be likened to creation or regarded as corporeal, and on that basis you denied His attributes. Yet you then affirmed Allah Most High’s most beautiful names, although likening Him to creation follows from the names just as it follows from the attributes.

“If you say, ‘He is Living, All-Knowing, All-Powerful,’ this entails ascribing corporeality and resemblance to Him just as affirming life, knowledge, and power does. You sought to affirm names without attributes, but this is impossible.

“If you have agreed to deny the attributes, which necessarily follow from the names, then denying a necessary consequence entails denying that which entails it. You must therefore deny the names.”

There are other examples of this in their writings.

Ibn Sīnā thus found in the books of Muslim theologians, among the Muʿtazilah and others like them, that singling out one of two identical alternatives rather than the other requires something that singles it out—as when something comes into being at one time rather than another. These theologians made this one of their foundational principles for establishing knowledge of the Maker.