The philosophers then claimed, on the basis of this argument, that the world is beginningless. Those who followed the path of the early Muslim generations and the imams established what the messengers affirmed—that the world had a beginning—through rational proof admitting no contrary conclusion. They explained the error of the speculative theologians among the Muʿtazilah and similar groups, who departed from the early generations and the imams by introducing an innovation contrary to revelation and reason. They also explained that the philosophers’ error in maintaining the beginninglessness of the world, and their opposition to reason and revelation, were greater than those of these theologians. They further showed that proving that the world had a beginning does not require the method followed by those theologians. Rather, this can be established through other sound rational methods that conflict with neither sound reason nor authentic transmitted evidence.

This establishes that everything other than Allah was brought into being, coming to exist after not existing, whether it is called a body, an intellect, a soul, or anything else.

Since the argument of those speculative theologians among the Muʿtazilah and their followers established only that the bodies of the world had a beginning, the philosophers and those later scholars who agreed with them—such as al-Shahrastānī, al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others—said: “You have offered no proof ruling out the existence of anything other than bodies. Consequently, establishing that the bodies of the world had a beginning does not entail that everything other than Allah had a beginning, unless you establish that everything other than Him is a body. Yet you have not established this.”

For this reason, some later scholars—such as al-Urmawī and those in Egypt who agreed with him, including Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Qushayrī—came to hold that the bodies of the world had a beginning. As for intellects and souls, however, they refrained from affirming that they had a beginning and maintained that they were beginningless