maintain that it is known of necessity that anything self-subsistent must be a body, just as the latter maintain that it is known of necessity that anything that is a body must be composite.

As we have already explained, if each group is correct in the necessary knowledge it invokes, then the error of those who affirm is less than that of those who deny, judged by both revelation and reason. For those who affirm have affirmed what is known through innate disposition and revealed law: that Allah is above the world. The early generations of the Muslim community and its imams agree with them on this. At most, some of them denied its implications.

Those who deny, however, have denied what innate disposition and revealed law establish, and have claimed the existence of a being whose nonexistence is known through innate disposition. They have excluded Him from both contradictory alternatives and have ascribed both to Him. Their position thus involves greater contradiction, greater negation, and greater denial of the truth.

If both claims constitute necessary knowledge, then what they call composition and compounding necessarily follows.

Our use, here and elsewhere, of the term “necessity”—as when we say “known of necessity,” “known unavoidably,” “this is necessary knowledge,” “something a person is compelled to know,” “we are compelled to know such-and-such,” and similar expressions—is a matter of addressing them in their own language, customary usage, and terminology. This terminology has become so widespread that it is now common in the speech of scholars of virtually all groups. That to which a person is compelled