Thus Ahmad explained that only the ignorant accept this expression and are deceived by it, because they believe that what this man describes is possible, even though we do not know how it could be so. Their ignorance consists in contradicting reason and revelation, accepting what reason cannot accept, and considering this comparable to the attributes conveyed by the Lawgiver, whose manner we do not know.

The distinction between the two is twofold. First, Allah and His Messenger speak with knowledge and truth concerning what He has disclosed about Himself, and He knows better than His servants. When He informs us of something, we know that His account is true, and we understand of what He tells us whatever He has enabled us to understand. As for those matters whose manner we do not know, our lack of such knowledge does us no harm once we know that the one informing us is truthful.

These people, however, make their claims on the basis of reason; they do not establish them through revelation. If the very reason upon which they rely neither accepts nor establishes what they say, but instead negates it, then their claims are false, and they have no knowledge of them. Their position is worse than that of someone who calls a witness only for that witness to contradict him, or cites a verse as evidence only for it to constitute evidence against him. For their refuge is reason, yet reason stands against them, not in their favour.

What Imam Ahmad mentioned accords with our discussion of the statements of this author of al-Taʾsīs and others like him: they put forward as rational what reason does not accept but instead rejects. An example is their claim that there exists a being who is neither within the world nor outside it, just as their brethren asserted the existence of a being within the world who is neither separate from the world nor in contact