Indeed, the early generations of the Muslim community and its imams agreed that knowing Allah and acknowledging Him do not depend on these methods described by those who follow the path of rational inquiry. In their view, some of these methods do not yield knowledge at all, let alone justify the claim that no one can acknowledge or know Allah except through the well-known method for knowing Him: establishing the temporal origination of the world through the temporal origination of its attributes. Yet they claim that Allah can be known only through this method.

This is a major issue, but this is not the place to discuss it at length. We have discussed it extensively elsewhere and explained that basic knowledge and acknowledgment of the Maker do not depend on rational inquiry and inference; rather, they arise self-evidently and necessarily. Hence all nations acknowledge the Maker, despite their immense polytheism and disbelief, and they follow some of these methods familiar to practitioners of rational inquiry, such as inferring an originator from temporal origination and a necessary being from contingency. This is why there is