a common noun in the grammarians’ usage, that is, a term predicated of one thing and of everything resembling it. Yet in ordinary speech people intend by the word “sun” nothing but this particular sun; the prefixed al- is for the definite, familiar referent, not for a generic class, as the Most High says:

“He is the One who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon; each glides along in its orbit.”

Here the denotations “sun” and “moon” are particular, not universal, whereas words such as “planet” and “star” are universal. Likewise, when Muslims use the name “God (ilāh),” they mean only their God—Allah, there is no deity but He.

Accordingly, neither term is a shared universal; the very concept forbids any plurality. Each denotes a single, specific entity—what they call a particular (juzʾī), not an unrestricted, shareable notion, which they call a universal (kullī).

Najm al-Dīn al-Khusrawshāhī, one of their leading figures and a close disciple of Fakhr al-Rāzī, would say, “We have come upon nothing but these universals.” He fell into such bewilderment and doubt that he kept repeating, “By Allah, I do not know what to believe; by Allah, I do not know what to believe; by Allah, I do not know what to believe!”

Reasoning from universals to their individual instances is reasoning from what is hidden to what is obvious.

The point is that the universals they invoke—if they amount to knowledge at all—are grasped by analogical inference (qiyās al-tamthīl); they do not depend in the least upon the comprehensive logical syllogism. Indeed, the very matters they claim to require that syllogism can be known in their particulars without it, and that approach is simpler and easier. Thus their so-called “demonstrative syllogism” ends up arguing for the more manifest by means of the less manifest.

If it is said, “But demonstration yields a universal proposition,” we reply: the demonstration that truly merits the name among them is that which is composed solely of purely certain premises whose denial is impossible