or on transmitted revelation, or one on reason and the other on transmitted revelation. Whoever supposes that they conflict is mistaken, because he believes one of them to yield certainty when it does not—especially when neither yields certainty.

Much of people’s disagreement on this subject and others consists of “differences reflecting diversity”: one person intends something true in what he affirms, while another intends something true in what he refutes, and both are speaking truthfully. Yet they imagine that there is a substantive disagreement between them when there is not. Much dispute concerns the use of expressions rather than the meanings apprehended by reason. Those with the soundest approach use expressions consistent with those of revelation and intend sound meanings that accord with revelation and reason. . . . (1).

The fundamental source of disagreement among Muslims on this subject is that the speculative theologians—the Jahmiyya, the Mu‘tazila, and their followers—adopted a method of proving that the world had a beginning and that the Creator exists which was an innovation in religion and rationally incoherent. They made this method obligatory, claiming that the Creator could be known only through it. This method contains equivocal premises yielding equivocal conclusions. Consequently, many who followed it misunderstood both the Lawgiver’s intent and the implications of reason. They neither understood what the prophetic texts conveyed nor precisely established what rational proofs entailed. For they said:

“It is impossible to know