of every kind, and from excesses, as well as from acts of disobedience and obedience. Thus, neither obedience nor disobedience can be attributed to them when they have done neither.

Further evidence for this is Allah Most High’s statement:

“You are only being recompensed for what you used to do.”

“Every soul is held in pledge for what it has earned.”

Whoever has not reached the age of action is held in pledge for nothing. Allah Most High said:

“We never punish until We have sent a messenger.”

I say:

If this speaker means that they were created devoid of recognition or denial, without their natural disposition tending towards either—so that the heart is like a tablet that accepts the inscription of faith or unbelief, being no more receptive to one than to the other, as the apparent wording suggests—then this is an unsound view. For, on that basis, the natural disposition would make no distinction between recognition and denial, or between being made a Jew, being made a Christian, and embracing Islam. All of this would depend solely on the causes at work.

It should then have been said: “Then his parents make him a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.” Since, however, he stated that the child’s parents cause him to disbelieve, mentioning the false religions but not Islam, it is clear that Islam differs from unbelief with respect to arising through an external cause.

Moreover, on this assumption, the heart would possess neither soundness nor impairment, neither uprightness nor deviation, since its relation to each would be identical, and it would be no more suited to one of them