such as life, knowledge, power, and other attributes. The question concerns only what cannot exist from eternity.

[The Imams’ Approach to the Question of the Quran]

One indication that al-Rāzī and others like him considered this argument weak—despite their intense desire to refute the Karrāmiyyah’s position whenever possible—is that he did not rely on it when discussing Allah’s speech in his most distinguished work, Nihāyat al-‘Uqūl. Yet the question of divine speech is among the most important issues founded upon this principle.

For the well-known approach to the question of the Quran followed by al-Ash‘arī and his followers, together with those among the followers of Ahmad and others who agreed with them on this principle—such as Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī, Judge Abū Ya‘lā, Ibn ‘Aqīl, Abū al-Hasan ibn al-Zāghūnī, and others among Ahmad’s followers; Abū al-Ma‘ālī al-Juwaynī and others like him, Abū al-Qāsim al-Rawāsī, Abū Sa‘īd al-Mutawallī, and others among al-Shāfi‘ī’s followers; Judge Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, Abū Bakr al-Turtūshī, and Judge