As for the majority of rational people among humankind, they said:
“This contradicts what is known through sensory perception.”
For the sake of this argument, groups of speculative theologians, among the Mu'tazilah and others, committed themselves to denying the Lord’s attributes altogether, or to denying some of them. For them, what indicates that these things are temporally originated is that attributes inhere in them, and an argument must be applied consistently. They therefore committed themselves to asserting that anything possessing an attribute that inheres in it is temporally originated. This, too, is utterly unsound and misguided. On account of this argument, they committed themselves to asserting that the Quran is created and to denying that Allah will be seen in the Hereafter and that He is exalted above His Throne, along with similar consequences accepted by those who consistently applied the premises of this argument, which the Mu'tazilah and their followers made the foundation of their religion.
These matters fall within what such people call the foundations of religion, but they are not, in reality, among the foundations of the religion that Allah has ordained for His servants.
As for the religion concerning which Allah says:
“Or do they have partners who have ordained for them a religion that Allah has not authorized?”
Al-Shūrā: 21
It has foundations and subsidiary matters of its own.
Once it is understood that the expression “the foundations of religion,” as used by those who employ it, contains ambiguity and vagueness because its meanings vary according to linguistic conventions and technical usage, it becomes clear that what constitutes the foundations of religion in the sight of Allah, His Messenger, and His believing servants has been inherited from the Messenger.
As for anyone who institutes a religion that Allah has not authorized, it is clear that the principles from which that religion necessarily follows cannot have been transmitted from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. For it is false, and whatever entails falsehood is itself false,