engage with them in answering and resolving it. Yet the respondent may lack the knowledge and clarity of expression needed for this, and the opponent may neither be silenced nor guided, owing to deficient powers of understanding, ill intent, or the need to establish numerous premises over a long period and substantiate them by answering objections and counterarguments. Thus they neglect to begin by exposing the invalidity of this argument and their opponents’ inconsistency, and by showing that anyone who advances it must accept something graver than what he rejects.

Once its invalidity becomes clear to him and to those debating with him, this evil is repelled, and this claim and argument are shown to be false. That is the purpose here; explaining the truth and setting it out fully is a separate task.

This is like someone whose land has been invaded by an enemy, who then begins building, planting, and developing things that will benefit him and help him repel his enemy, before driving the enemy out of his land. Whenever he builds something, the enemy destroys it, and he is unable to rebuild it. If he could have driven the enemy out from the outset, that would have been preferable. Even if doing so involved some hardship, it would be lighter than all the hardship he takes upon himself while the enemy remains in his land. False arguments are the enemy of truth. They are an enemy within the heart of someone seeking the truth through his own inquiry, and his heart is like his land. They are also his enemy when he engages with another debater, whether that person seeks to cooperate or to prevail.

For this reason, Abraham, the close friend of Allah, debated in this manner, employing a fortiori reasoning and showing that his opponent’s own position entailed something graver than what the opponent had sought to make his adversary’s position entail. As he said:

“How should I fear what you associate with Allah, while you do not fear that you have associated with Allah that for which He has sent down to you no