go astray nor suffer. * But whoever turns away from My remembrance will have a life of hardship, and We shall resurrect him blind on the Day of Resurrection.”
[Tā Hā: 123–124]

It has thus been shown that even the accomplished philosophers affirm that accepting the truth of what the Lawgiver has brought depends neither on any newly devised methods of speculative theology nor on any of their philosophical methods.

The most they claim is that philosophical methods yield knowledge for certain people which people at large are neither obliged nor encouraged to seek, and that this special knowledge contradicts some of the apparent meanings commonly understood by people at large.

We accept whatever they establish through sound proof, whether scriptural or rational. But when they say something we know to be false, we reject it.

We have pointed out that their assertions concerning the esoteric knowledge they claim as their exclusive preserve are far weaker than the assertions of those Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs whose views they have shown to be unsound.

It has also become clear to you that, for every group whose discourse contains rational arguments with which they oppose the words of the Lawgiver—whether concerning their outward or inward meaning—the majority of rational thinkers declare those arguments false. They demonstrate their unsoundness through sound, clear rational arguments that cannot be refuted.

This is one way in which Allah grants victory to His messengers and those who believe in the life of this world. For when Allah Most High raises up, against every group opposing the Messenger, people of their own kind who demonstrate the falsity of their opposing views and expose their ignorance and contradictions, it is like His raising up, against every faction that intensifies its warfare against him, people of their own kind who fight them with weapons.

The believer striving in Allah’s cause can then struggle against the former just as he can against the latter, and can draw support from what has been done by