utterly baseless on numerous counts, some of which we have already set forth in the discussion on cosmic encompassment.

Most of their scholars, in fact, maintain that this universe was brought into existence; the doctrine of its eternity entered their discourse only through Aristotle and those who followed him. I have examined Aristotle’s remarks on this question in Book Lambda—the final section of his Metaphysics and the apex of his philosophy. We have commented on what he and other philosophers put forward and shown that in this matter he opposed the majority of philosophers and their foremost authorities, and that he never produced a single proof establishing the eternity of any part of the universe. All that his words can be taken to indicate is the perpetual exercise of agency and what accompanies it.

We have treated this principle at length, together with the confusion that has overtaken two camps: the innovating scholastic theologians who attribute to the Sacred Law what is supported by neither Qur’an nor Sunnah and was never affirmed by the early generations or the imams of the community—thereby mixing truth with falsehood—and the philosophers, whose speech likewise blends truth and falsehood. Neither camp conforms to the dictates of clear reason that accord with what the messengers brought.

Their disagreement over the world’s duration:

Among those who do acknowledge that the world is originated—Greeks, Indians, and others—different factions have speculated about how long it will endure and when it will perish, yet without any sound proof. Their error lies in the fact that they recognized no cause for events here below except the motion of the heavenly sphere and the ever-changing configurations and conjunctions of the planets, and on that basis they tried to gauge its lifespan. Thus some of them said,

“It will last twelve thousand years,”
“thirty-six thousand years,”
“three hundred and sixty thousand years,”
or “forty-eight thousand— indeed, twenty-four thousand—years.”

All of this is mere conjecture, with no knowledge to support it.