as He says elsewhere in the surah:

“They regard their acceptance of Islam as a favor to you. Say, ‘Do not regard your acceptance of Islam as a favor to me. Rather, Allah has bestowed a favor upon you by guiding you to faith, if you are truthful.’”

If guidance here meant the guidance shared by believer and unbeliever, He would not have said, “if you are truthful.” For that guidance is present whether or not they are truthful in their claim to believe. This is like His saying:

“Then Allah, by His permission, guided those who believed to the truth concerning which they differed.”

There are similar passages showing that believers have been singled out for guidance that unbelievers do not possess, such as His saying:

“Whomever Allah wills to guide, He opens his heart to Islam; and whomever He wills to lead astray, He makes his heart tight and constricted.”

And His saying:

“One group He has guided, while another has deserved to go astray.”

And His saying:

“And thus We have revealed to you an inspiration by Our command. You did not know what the Book was, nor what faith was, but We have made it a light by which We guide whom We will of Our servants.”

There are many such passages in the Quran. This is not the place to discuss this issue at length; the purpose here is merely to draw attention to the basis of the argument.

The Muʿtazilah say that knowledge attained through a person’s own effort and choice is not something Allah has placed in his heart. They also say that knowledge one is obliged to acquire cannot be something Allah casts into a person’s heart, because what is obligatory must lie within that person’s power. According to them, Allah neither performs nor brings into being the acts within human power, nor does He have power over them. They may also say that a person deserves reward only for what lies within his own power.