and animals, minerals, and plants. Through these premises drawn from the lower world, they seek knowledge of Allah, of what lies above the heavens, and of the beginning and end of all things. This is a manifest error. Their own leading authorities have acknowledged that this is impossible, that they have no way of attaining certainty, and that they follow nothing but conjecture.

Such was the condition of these misguided, innovating Sabaeans and the Jews and Christians whom they had led astray. Their teachings reached certain practitioners of speculative theology and disputation who had not followed the guidance with which Allah sent His messengers. These men then sought to follow their path, just as the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, foretold:

“You will surely follow the ways of the nations before you, span for span and cubit for cubit.” They asked, “O Messenger of Allah, Persia and Rome?” He replied, “Who else would it be but Persia and Rome?”

They therefore argued that the world had a beginning using methods similar to those of these Sabaeans: reasoning about bodies and accidents by first establishing the existence of accidents, then establishing that bodies cannot be without them, and then that these accidents have a beginning. They would then say, “Whatever does not precede things that have a beginning must itself have a beginning.” Many practitioners of disputation relied on this to establish that the world had a beginning. When they concluded that accidents—which are attributes—indicated, in their view, that the subject bearing them had a beginning, they committed themselves to denying such attributes of Allah, because affirming them would entail His having a beginning.

The invalidity of this argument for the world’s having a beginning—which they believed to be the only proof, and perhaps even believed that no one’s faith was valid without it—is necessarily known as part of the religion of Islam.