learned. Even if they mention a group who made astronomical observations, this amounts, at most, to mass transmission confined to a particular group. How can someone who claims that reports mass-transmitted from the prophets cannot establish a demonstration binding upon him then establish a demonstration binding upon others through mass transmission of this kind, extol astronomy and philosophy, and claim that they constitute rational knowledge established by demonstration? Such is the state of what they regard as the foremost subject of rational demonstration. What, then, should one think of their metaphysics? When a discerning, rational person examines and reflects upon what their First Teacher, Aristotle, said about it, he learns only that they were among the most ignorant of all people concerning the Lord of the worlds, and that the unbelievers among the Jews and Christians knew more about these matters than they did.

The ninth point:

The prophets and the close servants of Allah possess knowledge through revelation and inspiration that lies beyond the syllogistic reasoning these men have described. Indeed, discernment and similar faculties also lie beyond it.

If they include such knowledge within the sensory and rational categories they have mentioned, they cannot exclude what they have not mentioned, and they are left with no defining criterion. Ibn Sīnā and his followers have stated that the propositions which must be accepted, and which constitute the material of demonstration, are self-evident first principles, sensory propositions, propositions based on experience, propositions based on intuition, and mass-transmitted propositions. Sometimes they add propositions accompanied by their terms. Yet they have offered no proof that these categories are exhaustive. Their defenders have therefore acknowledged that this classification is open-ended rather than exhaustive, and that no proof can be established for it.

Since this is so, it does not follow that everything outside their syllogistic reasoning cannot be known. Logic, then, cannot be an instrument providing rules whose observance safeguards against error. For