to the Essence. All these terms involve ambiguity, confusion, and vagueness.

The position of the early generations and the imams is that they neither affirm nor deny the term “other” with respect to the attributes. They do not state without qualification either that the attributes are other than Him or that they are not other than Him, because the term is ambiguous. If the speaker means by “other” something separate from Him, then the attributes are not other than Him. But if he means that one can be known without the other being known, then they are “other.” The same applies to similar expressions.

If this is their position on the term ghayr (“other”), then the term taghayyur (“change”) is derived from it.

Anyone who examines the statements of the leading speculative thinkers on this question will recognize that al-Rāzī has comprehensively covered what they have said, and that the proponents of negation have no rational argument that withstands scrutiny. The most they can do is demonstrate inconsistencies in the positions of their opponents among the Muʿtazilah, the Karrāmiyyah, and the philosophers.

It is well known that an opponent’s inconsistency entails that one of his two positions is false; it does not entail that the particular position under dispute is false. This is why those scholars who condemned the practitioners of innovated speculative theology described them in these terms, saying: “They counter one falsehood with another, and most of their discourse consists in exposing their opponents’ contradictions.”

Moreover, others need not subscribe to that particular opponent’s position which conflicts with his position on the disputed question. This applies here: even if the Karrāmiyyah were inconsistent on this question, others—the imams, the early generations, the scholars of hadith, and other groups engaged in rational inquiry and speculative theology—were not.