Thus, in reality, they do not acknowledge that He is the Most Generous. The will they affirm is supported by neither revelation nor reason. For no will is known to favor one thing over another without a cause that necessitates that preference. Whoever among the Jahmiyyah and Muʿtazilah says, “An agent capable of acting favors one of two alternatives within his power over the other without any determining factor,” is obstinately denying the obvious.

The examples they give—a hungry person taking one of two loaves, or a fleeing person taking one of two roads—are evidence against them. Such a choice occurs only when one alternative has an advantage: either it is easier for him, it is the one that occurred to him and that he pictured, or he thought it more beneficial. One must therefore have some advantage over the other, whether in terms of his ability or his conception and awareness. He then gives preference to willing that option, while he does not will the other. How, then, can it be said that his will favored one over the other without any determining factor, or that he favored willing this over willing that without any determining factor? This is impossible, and its impossibility becomes evident once it is properly conceived.

But when they advanced invented doctrines concerning the origin of creation, contradicting both revelation and reason, they found themselves compelled to resort to this obstinate denial, as has been explained at length elsewhere. This also gave the philosophers an opening against them from another direction. Thus, they neither defended Islam nor defeated the philosophers.