After the entire creed had been read and discussed, the objections raised by the obstinate disputants amounted to four questions:

— The first concerned our statement:

“Among the fundamental principles of the saved group is that faith and religion consist of speech and action, increasing and decreasing: the heart’s affirmation and the tongue’s utterance, and the actions of the heart, tongue, and limbs.”

They said:

“If this is said to be among the fundamental principles of the saved group, then anyone who does not affirm it falls outside that group—for example, our fellow speculative theologians who say that faith consists of assent, and those who say that faith consists of assent and verbal profession. If they are not among those who are saved, it follows that they are doomed.”

As for the other three questions, which were their principal objections, they directed them at our statement:

“Included in what we have mentioned concerning belief in Allah is belief in what Allah has stated in His Book, what has been mass-transmitted from the Messenger of Allah, and what the early generations of the Muslim community unanimously agreed upon: that He, glorified be He, is above His heavens, upon His Throne, exalted above His creation, and that He is with them wherever they are, knowing what they do. He combined both matters in His saying, exalted be He:

‘It is He who created the heavens and earth in six days and then established Himself above the Throne. He knows what penetrates into the earth and what emerges from it and what descends from the heaven and what ascends therein; and He is with you wherever you are. And Allah, of what you do, is Seeing.’

His saying, ‘And He is with you,’ does not mean that He is intermingled with creation. The language does not entail this, and it contradicts both the unanimous agreement of the early generations of the Muslim community and the innate disposition upon which Allah created His creatures.