does any act subsist in Him—neither creating the world, nor rising over the Throne, nor anything else. For if an act or an attribute subsisted in Him, He would possess attributes and be a locus for accidents. If an act dependent on His will subsisted in Him, this would entail a succession of acts and the perpetual occurrence of temporally originated events. If they allow the temporally originated kind to be perpetual or eternal, the argument they advanced for what they supposed the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had reported would be invalid.”

They are mistaken concerning both transmitted revelation and reason.

As for transmitted revelation:

The Messenger never reported the eternity of an essence devoid of attributes and acts. Rather, the divine texts consistently affirm that the Lord possesses attributes and performs acts.

This is necessarily known to anyone who has heard the Quran and Sunnah. They themselves concede that this is the apparent meaning of the texts. Yet he spoke of Allah through His most beautiful names and His verses affirming His attributes and acts, and reported that He:

“created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in six days, then rose over the Throne.”

(al-Furqān: 59)

Thus, whoever says that the celestial spheres are eternal and beginningless undoubtedly contradicts the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Likewise, whoever says, “The Lord Most High has neither knowledge, nor power, nor speech, nor action,” contradicts the Messenger. Neither has any sound rational evidence supporting his claim. On the contrary, sound reason contradicts it, as has been demonstrated elsewhere in numerous ways.

For example, sound reason recognizes that affirming a knower without knowledge or one who is powerful without power is impossible, just as it is to affirm