[As for those who maintain that part of the world is beginningless, they do not hold that the agent possesses will] (1), and the position of these thinkers (2) is even more unsound than that of Abū al-Barakāt and those like him. For the fact (3) that a particular effect has always been concomitant with its agent is something whose falsity, according to most rational thinkers, is known with self-evident necessity. If it is further claimed that the agent does not possess will, this only adds further misguidance and does nothing to strengthen their position. Rather, the agent’s very being the agent of its particular effect precludes that effect from being concomitant with it. Their examples of the ring moving together with the hand and the ray moving together with the sun (4), and other such examples, do not show an effect concomitant with its agent; the effect is concomitant only with its condition. There is no agent in the world whose effect has always been concomitant with it.

As for all the others who maintain that part of the world is beginningless, they do not hold that the agent possesses will.

Yet each of the two groups is among the most vehement in rejecting the premise of the Qadariyya—namely, that an agent possessed of choice gives preference without a newly arising determining factor. Whenever they admit this possibility, their claim that part of the world is beginningless becomes invalid. For their position is based entirely on the premise that an agent cannot become active after not having been so, because temporal events cannot arise without a cause. It is therefore impossible for the agent to remain inactive and then become active. Rather, if it is assumed to have been inactive, its inactivity must necessarily continue forever,