raise objections to it that some of them are unable to resolve, as has been discussed at length elsewhere.

Yet this is a lengthy and arduous approach for which there is no need. This is why none of the earlier speculative thinkers who practiced the newly introduced discipline of kalām followed it, let alone the early generations and the imams. The leading scholars of the Mu‘tazilah, the Ash‘arīs, the Karrāmīs, and other groups of speculative theologians established the existence of the Maker through temporal origination, contingency, and related arguments, without needing to base this upon refuting circular dependence and infinite regress, as their books demonstrate.

Thus, establishing the existence of the Maker by eliminating circular dependence and infinite regress in causes and their effects, as distinct from acts, is not found in the writings of such figures as Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā’ī, Abū Hāshim, ‘Abd al-Jabbār ibn Ahmad, Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī, and others; nor in those of Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī, al-Qādī Abū Bakr, Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak, Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū al-Ma‘ālī al-Jūnī, and their like; nor in those of Muhammad Karrām, Muhammad ibn al-Haysam, and their like; nor in the books of those who agree with the speculative theologians in many of their methods, such as the writings of Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī, al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, Abū al-Wafā’ ibn ‘Aqīl, Abū al-Hasan ibn al-Zāghūnī, and their like, as well as other followers of Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī, and Ahmad