Thus, when they mention the clear case, they suppose that the premise has become necessarily known. Yet the conclusion cannot be established without demonstrating the other case, which they have not demonstrated.

This shows the discerning person who reflects how doubts and innovations can find their way into the thinking of many people, even those who are among the most rational, intelligent, and virtuous. They may not have deliberately sought to mislead themselves or those whom they teach and address; rather, the matter became confused for them, and they fell into doubts that they mistook for clear proofs.

The Muslim should take heed of this and not turn away from the words of Allah and His infallible Messenger—words he knows falsehood cannot approach from before or from behind—to the words of people who are taken in by such doubts and become submerged in such ambiguous generalities, unable to discern the decisive distinctions within them that separate the sound from the unsound.

This also reveals the acumen of the early generations and the imams, who condemned discourse of this kind and regarded it as a form of ignorance whose proponents deserve punishment and retribution.

These men did, however, discuss elsewhere the argument against those who affirm the existence of something infinite, and debated with them, although they did not treat this as one of the indispensable premises in the present question.

Al-Qādī Abū Bakr subsequently stated:

“Section: If someone says—being one of the eternalists who hold that no motion occurs without being preceded by