Burghūth, and Hafs al-Fard, along with other leading figures in speculative reasoning and theology whose number Allah alone knows. These men debated the philosophers more effectively than the former group did. They and others do not concede to the philosophers the possibility of a contingent being that is neither a body nor something subsisting in a body. Indeed, their leading authorities have explicitly declared the invalidity of this “third category” to be self-evident.

Indeed, Abū Muhammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb, the leading authority of those who affirm the divine attributes—such as Abū al-‘Abbās al-Qalānisī, Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī, Abū ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mujāhid, and others—demonstrated that existing things must be either separate from or co-located with another, and that the claim that something exists which is neither separate from nor co-located with another is self-evidently false. His demonstration was comparable to, and even more forceful than, those thinkers’ demonstration that contingent beings are confined to bodies and their accidents.

Some groups of speculative thinkers have maintained that nothing exists except a body or something subsisting in a body—when “body” is understood in its technical rather than its linguistic sense. This is firmly rooted in the innate understanding of ordinary people. It is also the position of many philosophers, or most of them.

Likewise, the great imams, such as Imam Ahmad in his refutation of the Jahmiyyah, ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Makkī in his refutation of the Jahmiyyah, and others, explained that the claim made by those who negate the attributes—that there is a third category, neither separate from nor co-located with another—is manifestly false according to sound reason. This is among the evident propositions that rational people recognize through their own reason.

Affirming or denying the term “body” is an innovation; none of the early generations or the imams spoke in such terms, just as they did not affirm