raised against them when they affirmed Allah’s attributes while arguing from the attributes of bodies that those bodies must have come into existence.

They said: The attributes of “bodies” are accidents—that is, they occur and disappear, and therefore cannot persist at all—unlike Allah’s attributes, which endure. The majority of rational people, however, said: This contradicts what is known through the senses.

For the sake of this method, groups of speculative theologians among the Muʿtazilah and others accepted the denial of all the Lord’s attributes, or of some of them. For, in their view, what proves that these things came into existence is that attributes inhere in them, and an argument must be applied consistently. They therefore accepted that anything possessing an attribute that inheres in it must have come into existence. This too is utterly unsound and misguided. Consequently, they accepted the doctrine that the Quran is created, and denied that Allah will be seen in the Hereafter and that He is above His Throne, along with other such implications accepted by those who consistently applied the premises of this argument, which the Muʿtazilah and their followers made the foundation of their religion.

These matters fall within what they called the foundations of religion, but in reality they are not among the foundations of the religion Allah prescribed for His servants. As for the religion concerning which Allah said:

“Or do they have partners who have prescribed for them a religion that Allah has not authorized?”

That religion has foundations and subsidiary matters of its own.

Once it is understood that, in the usage of those who employ this term, “the foundations of religion” is an imprecise and ambiguous designation—because it bears different meanings according to different definitions and conventions—it becomes clear that what Allah, His Messenger, and His believing servants regard as the foundations of religion has been handed down from