degree of doubt: the world is not a single entity, but consists of Allah’s acts, continually renewed and succeeding one another. Reason admits the possibility that these acts have no beginning, as well as the possibility that they began to exist. However, all revealed laws affirm that they began to exist, so one must believe the one of these two possibilities affirmed by revelation.

Concerning His knowledge and will, one should say that neither has a specified modality nor began to exist; nor does it follow in temporally originated knowledge of a specified modality.”

[Section]

Ibn Rushd said:

“As for the second method, it is the method devised by Abū al-Maʿālī in his treatise known as al-Nizāmiyya. It rests on two premises. The first is that the world, with everything it contains, could be the opposite of what it is: for example, it could be smaller or larger than it is,