and the prophets, and believed in the good they do, by way of comparison. Would that undermine their existence or the belief in the attributes they possess? If so, Abū Ma‘shar and al-Rāzī would have to impugn the natural and mathematical sciences, as well as the angels and the prophets. If not, the argument he advanced is invalid.

The twelfth point: Regarding his statement, “It is thus established that the religion of idol worship is like an offshoot of the doctrine of the anthropomorphists,” he should be told: Something is established only by adducing rational or scriptural evidence. Grant that what Abū Ma‘shar mentioned is merely a report about earlier peoples: he neither identified them nor provided the chain through which he obtained this information. By the consensus of the leading religious scholars, Abū Ma‘shar is not someone whose reports constitute evidence in religion. For if he was not an unbeliever and a hypocrite, he was wicked and defiantly disobedient. Allah, Exalted and Holy, says:

“O you who believe, if an evildoer brings you news, verify it.”
[Al-Hujurāt 6]

Even supposing that one of the leading Successors had transmitted this report from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, he would regard it as a report lacking the intervening transmitter, insufficient to establish a ruling even on a subsidiary matter. How, then,