produces warmth, while stripping off one’s clothes produces cold, and so on.

Yet those scholastic theologians who deny causes and causal relations—such as al-Jahm ibn Ṣafwān and those who agree with him, among them Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī and his followers—maintain that what is known is merely the conjunction of one event with another by the pure will of the Omnipotent, Intentional Agent. In their view, neither event is a cause or generator of the other.

By contrast, the vast majority of rational people, whether Muslim or non-Muslim—the Ahl al-Sunnah among the theologians, jurists, ḥadīth scholars and Sufis, as well as non-Sunnis such as the Muʿtazilites and others—affirm causes. They say that just as the conjunction of two things is recognized, it is also recognized that fire possesses a power that brings about heating, water a power that brings about cooling, the eye a power that brings about sight, and the tongue a power that brings about taste. They therefore affirm “nature,” which they also call innate disposition (gharīza), inherent character (naḥīza), inborn creation (khalq), habit (‘āda), and similar terms.

Accordingly, the early authorities—such as Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, and others—would say, “Reason is an innate disposition.” Those who deny natural properties, however, regard reason as nothing but bare knowledge; this is the stance of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, Qāḍī Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā, Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb, Qāḍī Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, and others—though some of them state elsewhere that they acknowledge innate dispositions and causes, which is the position held by the jurists and the wider majority.

The point, then, is that the term “experience” is applied to what a person has verified through his intellect and senses even when the matter is beyond his control. People have experienced that when the sun rises, light spreads across the horizons, and when it sets, night becomes dark. They have likewise observed that when the sun recedes from the zenith overhead, cold arrives; when cold arrives, tree leaves fall, the earth’s surface cools and its interior warms. Conversely, when the sun draws near the zenith, heat comes; when heat comes, the trees leaf out and blossom. Such things are known to everyone, because they have grown accustomed to them and continually experienced them.