Thus, sound reason agrees with revealed law and follows it, however the matter is considered. Nothing in sound reason contradicts authentically transmitted revelation, which is the point to be established.

It is well known that the foundation of faith is to believe the Messenger in what he reports and obey him in what he commands. The early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars agreed that no proof, rational or otherwise, can contradict this. This is what we seek to establish here.

Some people, however, have claimed that some of his reports conflict with reason.

[The root of the innovators’ error in this matter]

The root of this error among those who profess Islam and faith is that some practitioners of rational inquiry and speculative theology sought to defend what they believed to be his teaching by means of what they believed to be a proof. They considered that proof to have necessary implications that must be accepted, yet those implications contradict many of his reports.

These people erred in their understanding of both revelation and reason. Thus, the Mu‘tazilah and other Jahmīs who deny the divine attributes and acts believed that he had taught that everything other than the eternal essence, devoid of attributes, was temporally originated both in its individual instances and in its kind. They imagined this to be part of the monotheism he had brought. They argued for it on grounds that entailed the temporal origination of everything in which an attribute or act subsists, making this the path to establishing His existence and oneness and affirming the truthfulness of His messengers.

They therefore said:

“His speech is created: He created it in something other than Himself, and no speech subsists in Him. He will not be seen in the Hereafter, nor is He separate from creation. Neither knowledge nor power nor any other attributes subsist in Him, nor