Divination likewise falls under this heading. They contend that the sole distinction between a prophet and a sorcerer is that the prophet’s soul is pure and bids people to goodness, whereas the sorcerer’s soul is vile and urges to evil. Thus, in their view, the two differ only in what each one commands, not in the very extraordinary causes involved.

We have already pointed out that certain theologians and speculative thinkers deny the existence of any inherent powers or natures in souls or in other bodies—whether animate or inanimate—or that such things exercise any real effect. They regard all of this as nothing more than sheer customary concomitance. This is the position of the majority of the Ashʿarites, together with those who side with them among the Literalists and among the proponents of analogy from the followers of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and others. Some of them go to extremes, declaring that a living creature’s capability has no effect whatsoever on its voluntary acts, whether the creature is human or otherwise. They also deny that God does anything for the sake of anything else, thereby rejecting causes and purposes in His creation and in His command.

Many of them repudiate qiyās outright; those who accept it regard the legal “causes” (ʿilal) as nothing more than mere indicators. Most of them, however, contradict themselves on this very principle: when they discuss the details of jurisprudence, medicine, or God’s wisdom, they speak in accordance with their innate disposition and faith, following the majority who affirm that God’s creation and command involve causes that precede events and wisdom that results from them. Yet when they debate the philosophers and the Muʿtazilites on the fundamentals of religion—issues of predestination, justice and injustice, the rationale behind God’s acts, and the causes of occurrences—they adopt a method that is, at root, the method of the determinists (al-Mujbira), such as Jahm ibn Ṣafwān and those like him, and they make