through syllogistic reasoning, and that a prophet possesses an intuitive faculty by which he discovers the middle term of a syllogism without a teacher, making him more perfect than others. They place his knowledge of the unseen in this category. Yet knowledge of natural science, arithmetic, and the like has not been attained through such syllogisms. On what basis, then, do they claim that no knowledge can be attained except through them? And on what basis do they claim that there are no grounds for certainty beyond those a claimant possesses: familiar outward and inward intuitions, familiar self-evident truths, mass-transmitted reports, and familiar empirical findings?

Familiar intuitions, inward and outward perception, experience, and the like yield, by themselves, knowledge only of a specific particular, which is unsuitable as a premise in a syllogism. Its universal application, however, is known either through analogical reasoning or through non-inferential knowledge that Allah creates directly in the heart. If He creates non-inferential knowledge universally applicable to a set of particulars, then creating knowledge of some of those particulars is easy. Rarely does their method yield knowledge of a conclusion without that conclusion also being knowable through the same means by which the premises were known, or through an easier means. Their syllogisms thus add nothing but prolixity, intimidation, and misguidance.

Elsewhere, we have discussed “Greek logic” at length, explaining what is true and false, beneficial and harmful in it. To deny that knowledge can be attained except through such syllogisms, and that syllogisms can yield certainty except through these premises, is to speak without knowledge and to reject what one has not fully grasped. Hence, the method of the Prophet and the early generations was to employ “a fortiori reasoning” in the study of divine matters, as Allah Most High says: “And to Allah belongs