—a conjunction that is not due to the Creator having produced this through that, nor for the sake of that—for in their doctrine there is neither cause nor wisdom for which the Creator acts. Accordingly, they hold that none of the lām-particles in the Qur’an that relate to God’s acts or rulings are lām of causation; they are merely the lām of consequence. This is a major question that has been discussed at length elsewhere.

What concerns us here is that, in the technical usage of all Muslims—indeed of every religious community and the majority of humankind—the term “intellect” denotes something that inheres in another: whether knowledge itself, a faculty, or acting in accordance with knowledge, and the like. It is never employed for a self-subsistent substance except in the parlance of these philosophers, who maintain that the perfected soul, once separated from the body, becomes an intellect.

Moreover, the followers of Aristotle claim that the intellect never acquires new knowledge at all; that the intellect, the knower, and the known are one and the same; and that the Necessary Existent is “one” in the sense of possessing no attributes whatsoever—along with other assertions that even fellow philosophers contest, and that the vast majority of rational people judge to be manifestly false by the plain dictates of reason.

Abū al-Barakāt and other philosophers oppose them on these points and demonstrate the unsoundness of their position. Hence, when Abū al-Barakāt cited their view, he said: “This is what has been transmitted from the partisans of Aristotle, and no one has disagreed with them concerning it or raised any objection…"