and error on the side of their opponents, as al-Rāzī himself acknowledges. Although he was among the fiercest critics of revealed evidence—even introducing the claim, which had no other known prominent proponent, that it does not yield certainty—he nevertheless says:

“I have reflected on the methods of speculative theology and the approaches of philosophy, but have not found them to heal the ailing or quench the thirsty. I have found the most direct path to be that of the Quran. Concerning affirmation, I read:

‘To Him ascends good speech.’

‘The Most Merciful rose over the Throne.’

And concerning negation, I read:

‘There is nothing like Him.’

‘They do not encompass Him in knowledge.’”

He said: “Anyone who has experienced what I have experienced will know what I know.”

Moreover, anyone who examines what is found among the groups that have not held fast to the prophets’ teaching, guidance, and reports will find them all bewildered, astray, beset by doubt and misgivings, or ignorant and unaware of their own ignorance. They fall within one or the other of the two likenesses in the Quran:

“As for those who disbelieve, their deeds are like a mirage on a level plain, which a thirsty man mistakes for water, until, when he reaches it, he finds nothing there, but finds Allah there, who settles his account in full. And Allah is swift in reckoning.”

“Or like layers of darkness in a deep sea, covered by a wave, above which is another wave, above which are clouds—layers of darkness, one above another. When one holds out his hand, he can scarcely see it. Whoever Allah does not grant light has no light.”