conceiving its two terms—or from an impediment in the form of desires that turn people away [ة] from Allah’s path. Accordingly, knowledge of the truth is attained only when its prerequisites are present and its impediments absent. Otherwise, without these two conditions, necessary truths may be denied, or what is not necessary knowledge may be treated as such.

Those who affirm say to those who negate:
“You yourselves, in denying this necessary knowledge, cannot escape these categories, which no sophist escapes.”

Those who negate say to those who affirm:
“Rather, it is you who claim necessary knowledge where there is none.”

The founder is attempting to establish that his opponents have no necessary knowledge of what they have stated. Yet he cannot deny that they have such knowledge, and nothing he has said disproves it. Thus, his argument—and that of his peers—has demonstrably broken down at the very first stage.