that the servant is the originator of his own acts—otherwise, the proof would fail—and other such principles on which the majority of Muslims disagree with them.

Most of these speculative theologians, who infer that bodies began to exist from the origination of motion, use this as their proof for denying what the apparent meaning of the revealed texts indicates: that Allah comes, descends, and so forth. The Mu'tazilah and others use this as their proof that Allah has no attributes: neither knowledge nor power, neither might nor mercy, nor any other attribute. For these, they claim, are accidents that indicate that the one possessing them began to exist.

Most writers on philosophy—such as Ibn Sīnā—begin with logic, then turn to natural philosophy and mathematics—or omit it—before proceeding to their account of metaphysics.

You will find that writers on speculative theology begin with its preliminaries: rational inquiry, knowledge, and proof, which belong to the same kind of study as logic. They then proceed to establish that the world began to exist and that there is One who brought it into existence. Some proceed instead to divide the objects of knowledge into the existent and the nonexistent, examining existence and its divisions, as a philosopher may do at the beginning of metaphysics.

As for the prophets, the first thing they call to is the testimony that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.