the “esotericists” and the stripping away of their veils, for some of them belonged to the negationist, esotericist Khurramiyyah. In their discussions and books, they began employing arguments advanced by Aristotle and his philosophical followers: that motion cannot have a beginning, that time cannot have a beginning, and that an agent cannot begin acting after not having acted. Thus, both these philosophers and these speculative theologians used motion to argue for their respective positions.

Aristotle and his followers say:

“Motion as such cannot begin to exist after not having existed, and an agent cannot begin acting after not having acted. For sound reason clearly establishes that if an entity does nothing and then acts after not having acted, some new event must have occurred. Otherwise, if it is assumed to remain in the same state in which it did not act, it still does not act. If it acts now, its activity must therefore have been perpetual.”

They also say:

“‘Before’ and ‘after’ necessarily imply time. Thus, whoever maintains that time began to exist is committed to affirming its beginninglessness by the very assertion that it began to exist.”

They also say:

“Time is the measure of motion. Its beginninglessness therefore entails the beginninglessness of motion, and the beginninglessness of motion entails the beginninglessness of that which moves—namely, a body. This necessarily establishes the existence of a beginningless body.”

They then identify this beginningless body as the celestial sphere. Yet they have no proof for this, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

The speculative theologians among the Jahmiyyah, Muʿtazilah, Kullābiyyah, and Karrāmiyyah began responding to them, claiming that an agent endowed with power and choice can favour one of two equivalent possibilities within his power over the other, which is identical to it, without any cause whatsoever. On this principle they based their account of Allah as the Creator of created things.