from Him. Nor did any of them say that He became a speaker, or became able to speak, after not having been so. These matters have been discussed at length elsewhere.

The point is that these doctrines—advanced by the speculative theologians among the Jahmiyyah, Mu‘tazilah, Kullābiyyah, Karrāmiyyah, and Sālimiyyah, and by those later scholars who agreed with them while affiliating themselves with some of the four imams—contradicted the consensus of the early generations and the leading scholars, what the Quran and Sunnah brought, and the clear rational understanding that Allah has made innate in His servants. It was these doctrines that enabled those eternalist philosophers to gain the upper hand over them. Nevertheless, the philosophers’ position is even more unsound in terms of both rational and transmitted evidence.

Section

The point here is that, among Muslims and most rational people, the term “reason” denotes an attribute, what is called an accident inhering in the rational being. This is what the Quran indicates in the words of the Most High:

“So that you may understand.”

And His words:

“Have they not travelled through the land so that they may have hearts with which to reason?”

And His words:

“We have made the signs clear to you so that you may understand.”

These and similar passages indicate that ‘aql (reason) is the verbal noun of ‘aqala–ya‘qilu (to reason). Accordingly, the term “reason” does not apply to mere knowledge upon which its possessor does not act, nor to action without knowledge. Rather, it applies only to knowledge