the newly produced states of satiety, quenching, cutting, and the like arise only in the presence of those concomitant actions, not through them. According to this school, no power, no inherent nature, and no act exercises the slightest causal influence on such events in any respect whatsoever. Hence their argument is even stronger and clearer when it comes to miracles.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, counted this question among the fundamental points on which he disputed with the philosophers. For that very reason Ibn Rushd, in The Incoherence of the Incoherence, censured him vehemently, treating this as one of the passages by which he could score an advantage over Abū Ḥāmid, seize the opportunity to rebut him, and come to the philosophers’ defense.

As for the Muʿtazilites and their fellow Qadarites, they differentiate between the causal efficacy of a living, capable agent and that of anything else. They acknowledge real influence for the capable agent—whether Creator or creature—yet deny any efficacy to all other things.