Section
Al-Rāzī said:
“The third argument”
The account of Allah’s close friend:
“I do not love those that set.”
Setting means change. This indicates that whatever undergoes change cannot be a god at all.
The response has several aspects:
First: We do not concede that setting means change. He has offered no proof for this, but merely asserted it.
Second: This contradicts the consensus of scholars of language and Quranic exegesis. Indeed, it contradicts what is necessarily known in religion, as well as the mass-transmitted record of linguistic usage and Quranic exegesis. For “setting” means disappearing from view. One says, afalat al-shamsu (the sun set), with the present-tense forms ta’fulu and ta’filu and the verbal noun ufūl, when it disappears from view.
No one has ever said that it means change, or that the sun is said to have set when its colour changes, or when it is moving through the sky. Nor is the wind said to have set when it blows, water when it flows, trees when they move, or human beings when they speak, walk, and perform their activities. Indeed, no one has ever said that a person who falls ill, or whose face turns yellow or red, is said to have set. This claim is thus among the gravest fabrications against Allah, against Allah’s close friend, and against