whomever He wills among His servants, it follows that people differ more greatly in their knowledge of Him than in their knowledge of anything else they know.

This makes clear to you that those speculative theologians and rational thinkers who claim to have known Allah fully—such that none of His attributes remains unknown to them, and that whatever they do not know and have no evidence to establish is therefore nonexistent in reality—are mistaken, in error, innovators, and astray. Their argument is untenable. For the absence of conclusive or presumptive evidence for something is evidence of its nonexistence, unless it is known that its existence necessarily entails that evidence.

An example is something which, had it existed, people would have had ample interest and motivation to report. Such reporting would then be a necessary consequence of its existence, so the absence of that necessary consequence would establish the absence of what entails it. Thus, we know that if there were a great city like Baghdad or Cairo between Syria and the Hijaz, people would report its existence. If only one, two, or three people reported it, we would know that they were lying.

Likewise, we know that if anyone had claimed prophethood during the lifetime of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, as Musaylima, al-ʿAnsī, Tulayha, and Sajāh did, people would have reported his claim just as they reported theirs. Had anyone attempted to rival the Quran and produced something people thought comparable to it, that too would have been transmitted, just as the ‘Quran’ of Musaylima the Liar was transmitted, as were al-Fusūl wa-l-Ghāyāt by Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī and other compositions by those who attempted to rival it—even when these were absurdities that no rational person would consider comparable to it.

Accordingly, ordinary human habits and inclinations would provide an even stronger impetus and greater eagerness to transmit something displaying an apparent resemblance and equivalence to it, whether people loved it or hated it. This is something inherent in human nature.