Al-Ṣafadiyyah - Ibn Taimiya - (2/107)

Among their further inconsistencies are the following:

• They hold that the voluntary agent brings events into existence without any act of will, for—according to them—His will itself is a created thing that arises without a prior will. In their view, will is not an essential attribute of His very being; it is something produced by another producer. Once it is conceded that one event may be originated without a will, the origination of any other event without a will becomes equally admissible. Hence their sects split over the question of the Divine will.

• The Baghdadi Muʿtazilites—and with them the Rāfiḍites and the Jews who agreed with them—flatly denied that God possesses a will. The Basran Muʿtazilites, by contrast, affirmed a created will that inheres in no subject at all; but this forced them to posit an attribute that subsists by itself—indeed, an accident that exists independently—which is self-evidently impossible and undermines the very notion of purposeful action. Were such a claim admissible, one might just as well claim the existence of speech, knowledge, or power located in no subject whatsoever.

• They thus affirmed the occurrence of an event without any will behind it.

• They portrayed the Living One as willing by means of a will that does not subsist in Him, just as they portrayed Him as speaking by speech that does not subsist in Him. If this were allowed, it would equally allow one to say that He knows by knowledge that does not subsist in Him, exercises power by a power that does not subsist in Him, or lives by a life that does not subsist in Him—and so on.

• The unsoundness of the distinction they draw can also be shown as follows: you yourselves stipulate that, whenever the intended object comes into existence, power and will must be present, and that it is impossible for the intended object to come about through a power and will that precede it. You refuted the Qadariyya on this point by saying that it would entail the occurrence of an event through something non-existent. Yet if, at the very moment the intended object comes into being, the will or the power were assumed to be non-existent, those very qualities would still have to exist at that moment

ومنها: أنهم أثبتوا إحداث المختار للحوادث بلا إرادة فإن إرادته حادثة بلا إرادة إذ الإرادة عندهم ليست من لوازم نفسه بل هي تحدث من محدثها ومتى جاز إحداث حادث بلا إرادة جاز إحداث آخر ولهذا تفرقوا في إرادة الباري تعالى. فالبغداديون من المعتزلة ومن وافقهم من الرافضة واليهود نفوها والبصريون أثبتوا إرادة حادثة لا في محل فلزمهم إثبات صفة قائمة بل عرض قائم بنفسه وهذا معلوم الفساد بالضرورة وهو إبطال لحقيقة الغرض وإن جاز ذلك جاز إثبات كلام لا في محل وعلم لا في محل وقدرة لا في محل. ومنها: أنهم أثبتوا حادثا بلا إرادة. ومنها: أنهم جعلوا الحي مريدا بإرادة ليست قائمة به كما جعلوه متكلما بكلام لا يقوم به وإن جاز هذا جاز أن يعلم بعلم لا يقوم به ويقدر بقدرة لا تقوم به ويحيا بحياة لا تقوم به إلى أمثال ذلك. ومما يبين فساد ما ذكروه من الفرق أن يقال أنتم قررتم أنه لا بد عند وجود المقدور المراد من وجود القدرة والإرادة وأنه يمتنع وجود المقدور المراد بقدرة وإرادة تتقدم على المقدور المراد وأبطلتم قول القدرية في ذلك بأنه يستلزم وجود الحادث بأمر معدوم وإن قدر أنه عند وجود المقدور المراد كانت الإرادة أو القدرية معدومة فلا بد من وجود ذلك عند