someone, to someone whose aim is to seek a fatwa from a person who will give him Allah’s ruling, and to someone whose aim is to bring his dispute with an opponent before someone who will judge between them justly, and similar cases.

The initial object of all these people’s intention is something unrestricted and universal; they do not have any particular individual in mind. Yet they cannot achieve their aim unless they intend something particular. Otherwise, as long as they have nothing beyond an unrestricted will, they do nothing, since the unrestricted has no existence among concrete entities. No universal can ever exist in external reality while remaining universal. Thus, anyone who knows only universals can never do anything, nor can he know any existing thing, since nothing that exists in external reality is a universal.

On these people’s view, then, Allah knows none of the things that exist; indeed, He has not brought any of them into existence.

This is a conclusive point that cannot be evaded. The more a rational person reflects upon it, the clearer the unsoundness of this position becomes.

The exception Ibn Sīnā made—that He knows stable entities individually—is not valid. For, according to the correct view, these too have a beginning and are subject to change like other things. Thus, if He knows only universals, it follows that He does not know them. Even on the view of the first of these thinkers—that they are beginningless and everlasting—they necessarily entail changes. As for bodies, they are continually in motion. As for intelligible entities, they have no reality; and even supposing they exist, they are, in these thinkers’ view, the causes of changing bodies.

His underlying principle has already been stated: knowledge of the cause necessarily entails knowledge of the effect. Thus, knowledge of causes entails knowledge of their own effects, and the cause has necessitated particular, changing effects,