and rhetorical and dialectical methods, as Abū Hāmid does, this is an offense against both the revealed Law and philosophy, even if he intended only good. For he sought thereby to increase the number of the learned, but instead increased the number of those who cause corruption without increasing the number of the learned. This gave some an avenue to disparage philosophy, others to disparage the revealed Law, and still others to reconcile the two. It seems that this was one of his aims in his books.

The evidence that he sought thereby to awaken people’s natural faculties is that he did not adhere to any one school of thought in his books: with the Asharīs he is an Asharī, with the Sufis a Sufi, and with the philosophers a philosopher, as has been said: