and the earth after neither had existed, and challenged their opponents with the case of an endless future. From this debate arose their discussion of future events. The two leading proponents of this approach—Jahm ibn Safwān, leader of the determinist Jahmiyya, and Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf, leader of the Qadarī Muʿtazila—carried it through consistently and denied that anything infinite could exist in the future. Jahm therefore held that Paradise and Hell would cease to exist, whereas Abū al-Hudhayl confined himself to saying that the movements of their inhabitants would cease.

This also led Abū al-Maʿālī to espouse the doctrine of istirsāl: the knowledge of the Lord, Most High, encompasses bodies individually and the specific kinds of accidents; as for individual instances of accidents, His knowledge extends over them, since infinity is impossible both in knowledge and in actual existence.

People rejected this view and spoke harshly against him. It is even said that Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī shunned him because of it.

The various Muslim groups thus came to hold three views concerning the possibility of an endless succession of events:

One view holds that it is impossible both in the past and in the future.

Another holds that it is possible in both.

A third holds that it is possible in the future but not in the past.

The Muʿtazila and the Jahmiyya then relied on this argument to deny that attributes and acts could subsist in Allah, Most High. They said: “Attributes and acts can subsist only in a body.” This was also their basis for arguing that bodies are temporally originated.