a determining cause, except through a kind of strained reasoning that does not enable them to conceive of it.

It has become clear that people occupy different levels in this matter. The closer someone is to the innate rational disposition and the prophetic Law, the sounder his approach.

Thus, someone who argues that a contingently existing thing—that is, a contingent existent—cannot have its existence prevail over its nonexistence except through an agent, and that something which came into existence, although it might not have done so, could not have come into existence rather than failed to do so unless something necessitated its coming into existence, takes a sounder approach than someone who argues, without qualification, that the existence of a contingent existent cannot prevail over its nonexistence except through a determining cause. The former approach was followed by many theologians among the Muʿtazilah and the Ashʿarīs, as well as those jurists who agreed with them among the followers of the four imams and others.

In turn, someone who argues that the existence of the contingent cannot prevail over its nonexistence except through a determining cause takes a sounder approach than someone who argues that neither its existence can prevail over its nonexistence nor its nonexistence over its existence except through a determining cause. This latter approach was followed by Ibn Sīnā and his followers, such as al-Suhrawardī, al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others. Yet these thinkers contradicted themselves, for elsewhere they stated:

“Continued nonexistence requires no cause.”

This is also what Muslim rational thinkers of every school have maintained.

Furthermore, those who used this argument without needing to rule out an infinite regress, as the majority did, are nearer the mark than those who needed to rule out an infinite regress, as Ibn Sīnā and others like him did.