This principle was among the things for which Imam Ahmad censured Ibn Kullāb and his followers—even al-Hārith al-Muhāsibī, despite his eminent standing. Ahmad instructed people to shun him and the Kullābiyyah, saying: “Beware of Hārith; the entire trouble comes from Hārith.” When al-Hārith died, only a few people attended his funeral prayer because of Imam Ahmad’s warning against him, even though his knowledge and religious commitment surpassed those of most who agreed with Ibn Kullāb on this principle. It has been said that al-Hārith recanted this view and acknowledged that Allah speaks with a voice, as reported by Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Ishāq al-Kalābādhī, the author of al-Ta‘arruf li-madhhab al-tasawwuf (An Introduction to the Sufi Way). Many later followers of Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī, Ahmad, and Abū Hanīfah agreed with Ibn Kullāb on this principle, as has been discussed at length elsewhere.

Ibn Aqīl’s statements on this principle varied. Sometimes he adopted Ibn Kullāb’s position, and sometimes he adopted the position of the early generations and the scholars of hadith: that matters dependent on choice subsist in Allah. He states that new acts of seeing subsist in Him as new objects of sight come into being—acts of seeing that did not exist before—and that knowledge that each thing has come into existence subsists in Him, distinct from His prior knowledge that it would come into existence. Several verses of the Quran indicate this, such as His saying, Most High:

“So that We may know who follows the Messenger.”

There are other such passages. His statements on this principle and others vary: sometimes he adopts one position, and sometimes another. For these are matters