Whoever understands what the prophets mean and what these people mean necessarily recognizes that the two are not the same. For example, he understands what they mean by the First Intellect: that, in their view, it coexists with the Lord of the worlds eternally, without beginning or end, and that it originates everything besides itself, or that everything besides it comes into being through its mediation. In their view, everything beneath the lunar sphere proceeds from the Active Intellect. Yet it is necessarily known from the religion of the prophets that none of the angels, as the prophets understand them, is the lord of everything besides Allah, or the lord of everything beneath the lunar sphere. Nor is any angel beginningless and everlasting, having always existed and never ceasing to exist.

It is also known that the report attributed to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—

“The first thing Allah created was the intellect”—

is a false hadith. Even if it were true, however, it would constitute evidence against them. Its wording is:

“When Allah first created the intellect”—

with awwal (first) in the accusative, functioning as an adverb of time:

“He said to it, ‘Come forward,’ and it came forward. Then He said to it, ‘Turn back,’ and it turned back. He then said, ‘By My might, I have created nothing dearer to Me than you. Through you I take, and through you I give; through you comes reward, and through you comes punishment.’”

Another version reads:

“When Allah created the intellect.”

Thus, if the hadith were established as authentic, its meaning would be that He addressed the intellect at the very beginning of its creation, that it was created before anything else, and that these four matters occur through it—not that all created things do.

In Muslim usage, the word 'aql (intellect) is the verbal noun of 'aqala (he reasoned), ya'qilu (he reasons): 'aqlan (reasoning). It denotes the faculty through which one reasons, as well as the knowledge and actions resulting from it. In no linguistic usage does it ever denote a self-subsisting substance. This meaning therefore cannot be intended by the word “intellect.”

Moreover, elsewhere we have demonstrated, on the basis of sound reason, the invalidity of their claims. Their assertions concerning immaterial entities and entities separate from matter ultimately amount to affirming the soul that separates from the body at death, and affirming the intelligible concepts that the soul abstracts and that subsist within it. This is the full extent of the truth they establish in this matter.