It rests on two premises:

The first is that a body cannot be devoid of accidents, which are attributes.

The second is that whatever cannot be devoid of attributes—which are accidents—is temporally originated, because attributes—which are accidents—can only be temporally originated. They may posit this concerning only certain attributes, such as spatial states. Whatever cannot be devoid of such temporally originated events is itself temporally originated, since an infinite series of events is impossible.

It is necessarily known that Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, did not use this method to call people to acknowledge the Creator and the prophethood of His prophets.

For this reason, accomplished speculative theologians, such as al-Ashʿarī and others, have acknowledged that this is not the method of the messengers and their followers, nor of the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars. They have stated that those authorities regarded it as forbidden. Indeed, discerning scholars hold that it is an invalid method, and that its premises require distinctions and qualifications that prevent them from establishing the claim without qualification.

Thus, you will find that whoever relies on it for the foundations of his religion must face one of two alternatives: either he recognizes its weakness and compares it with the arguments of those who maintain that the world is eternal, finding the arguments equally balanced or favoring one side at one time and the other at another—as is the case with various groups among them—or, for its sake, he commits himself to consequences known to be unsound according to both revelation and reason, as this argument led Jahm to affirm the extinction of Paradise and Hell, and likewise led