the Jahmiyyah, the Mu'tazilah, the Ash'ariyyah, the Shī'ah, and others, who set out four premises: establishing the existence of accidents, establishing that they are originated, and establishing that bodies necessarily possess them. The fourth is that whatever does not precede events is itself originated. Yet this is the conclusion. It could serve as a premise if it were demonstrated that whatever does not precede events as a kind is originated. But they have not established that here, and the wording is ambiguous, as you can see.

However, these scholars, such as Judge Abū Bakr, Judge Abū Ya'lā, and others, have explained their argument concerning this principle—the impossibility of an infinite number existing—elsewhere. They grouped together the arguments against an infinite number of events, an infinite number of parts—that is, indivisible atoms—and similar cases. Some make this an established proof in the question under discussion, as Ibn 'Aqīl, al-Qushayrī, and others have done.

We have mentioned that people hold three positions concerning the existence of an infinite number in the past and the future. Each position has been held by a group of speculative thinkers among Muslims and others.

The first is that an infinite number cannot exist either in the past or in the future. This is the position of Abū al-Hudhayl and Jahm ibn Safwān. On the basis of this principle, Jahm maintained that Paradise and Hell would perish, a position vehemently condemned by the early generations of the Muslim community.

This is not the position of those who say that Paradise and Hell have not been created and that, if they had been created, they would perish, as a group among the Jahmiyyah and the Mu'tazilah maintained. For these people say that