This, then, is the very premise adopted by those speculative theologians who argue for the world’s origination by saying: “Whatever is never devoid of transient events must itself be originated, for an endless chain of events without a first is impossible.” From that premise they are forced to claim that an act cannot be within the Lord’s power, so they declare that acting only became possible after it had once been impossible.

Anyone familiar with the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the statements of the early generations and their leading imams knows that nowhere in the Book or the Sunnah is there the slightest indication that, in pre-eternity, action was not possible for the Lord, or that both action and speech were then beyond Him, or that He remained eternally inactive—devoid of action or speech—only to become able, acting, and speaking after not being so.

At times they attempt to evade this by saying, “He has always been able, but the object of His power was impossible in pre-eternity.” This is self-contradictory, for what is subject to power cannot simultaneously be impossible; it can only be possible. Their claim also entails a transition from impossibility to possibility without the occurrence of anything new, which is patently false.

Jahm ibn Ṣafwān was the first to publicize such discourse in Islam. Pursuing his own logic, he held that whatever has a beginning must necessarily have an end, and that the proof which rules out an infinite series does not distinguish between past and future. On that basis he asserted that Paradise and Hell would eventually cease to exist.

This, along with his denial of the divine attributes, his claim that the Qur’an is created, and his rejection of the beatific vision—which his argument logically requires—was condemned by the early generations of the ummah and their leading scholars.