held by the majority of scholars among the early and later generations is that devout obedience, submission, and glorification are something beyond this. This resembles the statement made by some that an unwilling person’s prostration consists in his humble submission and yielding to whatever Allah wills for him, whether health or illness, wealth or poverty. Likewise, some have interpreted His words:

“There is not a thing except that it glorifies Him with praise.”

They say: “Its glorification consists in its pointing to its Maker, thereby prompting others to glorify Him.” The correct view, however, is that created things glorify Him and prostrate in ways appropriate to them.

The point is that created beings’ dependence upon the Creator, their pointing to Him, and their bearing witness to Him are matters known through the innate disposition upon which Allah has created His servants. Likewise, He has created them with an innate disposition to acknowledge Him even without these signs. This has been discussed at length elsewhere, where the distinction between the evidence furnished by signs and that furnished by syllogistic and analogical inference has been explained. Rational demonstrative inference may be formulated either in universal terms, as in the logical figures, or in analogical terms. It has also been explained that the common factor is the cause underlying the judgment, and that the judgment must hold wherever that factor is found. We have discussed the forms of these two kinds of inference at length elsewhere.

The precise account is that knowing that whatever comes into existence must have someone who brings it into existence is innate and immediate knowledge in the case of specific particulars, and is more forceful there than in the corresponding universal proposition. Universals become universals in the mind only after their particular instances are established in existence. The same applies to most universal propositions that many speculative theologians and philosophizers make the foundations of their knowledge, such as: “The whole is greater than the part”; “Two contradictories cannot both be true or both be false”; and “Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another,” and similar propositions. Whatever whole a person conceives of, he knows that it is greater than its part, even if the universal proposition does not occur to him. Thus, he knows that some parts of the human body are larger than others, that a dirham is larger than a portion of it, and that a city is larger than a part of it