Allah does away with all bodies; he did not categorically reject this claim. There are other such reports which they transmit on the basis of the information available to them. More astonishing still is that many of them think there is no disagreement over this. Rather, they regard the proposition that knowledge of Allah—meaning acknowledgment of the Maker—can only be attained through rational inquiry as a matter of agreement among those engaged in such inquiry. When told that the theologians themselves disagree over this, they are surprised. This is because someone who follows one of these approaches scarcely knows any other.

Thus, in the books of the theologians, you find evidence of such profound ignorance of what the Messenger, the Companions, the Successors, and the leading scholars of Islam said that one can only say: it is as though these people grew up outside the lands of Islam. Undoubtedly, they grew up among people unfamiliar with the Islamic sciences, until what is right came to be regarded among them as wrong, and what is wrong as right. Tribulations engulfed them, amid which the young were reared and the old grew decrepit; the Sunnah was replaced with innovation, and truth with falsehood.

For this reason, I quote accounts of this disagreement from the statements of their leading figures, to reassure those who rely on their reports, even though these reports contain a degree of