The People of the Book—among them the Samaritan Jews and others who side with the Muʿtazilites—hold to these same two positions. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Khaṭīb and those of his stripe, however, lapse into contradiction in this regard. When debating the Muʿtazilites about questions of divine decree and compulsion, they follow the line that says a contingent being cannot have one of its two alternatives preferred over the other except through a complete, necessitating cause, making no distinction between a voluntary agent and a necessitated cause. Yet when they confront the philosophers over the world’s origination, and the eternalists demand an explanation for why the universe began to exist, they adopt the Muʿtazilite stance, claiming that a capable, freely choosing agent can favor one side of what he is able to do without any preferring cause—or they assert that the eternal will is the preferring factor, just as the Ashʿarites, Karrāmiyyah, and those who side with them among the Ḥanafīs, Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Ḥanbalīs maintain. This issue is one of the great foundational matters in which they have become deeply unsettled