this is frequently reported from these men, the leading proponents of this doctrine of negation. They acknowledge that they have no knowledge of it and return to the position of those guided by their innate disposition and those who adhere to the texts’ apparent meaning—whom they call the Hashwiyya. How, then, can they be the champions of Allah’s oneness and transcendence, amid all this doubt, uncertainty, bewilderment and obfuscation?!

The twelfth point:

It may be said to him: Your professed refutation of the eternalists by denying this premise and others like it—through which it has become clear that you deny truths known innately—has landed you in four predicaments:

First: The agreement of this community’s early generations and leading scholars in condemning you and your speculative discourse.

Second: The aversion of the people of faith to your approach, and the hatred for it that Allah has cast into their hearts. They are Allah Most High’s witnesses on earth.

Third: The eternalist philosophers’ hopes of winning you over, and their saying about you: “They are people of disputation and speculative theology, not people of knowledge and demonstration.” So much so that many of you have apostatized and joined them. Indeed, Ibn al-Rāwandī, who is said to have been one of al-Ash‘arī’s teachers,