“We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.”

[Surah Fussilat: 53]

Thus, He stated that He would show them the signs in the horizons (1) and within themselves, demonstrating that the Quran He made known to His servants is true. The demonstrative evidence furnished by the Quran and that furnished by direct observation therefore concur, while the conclusions of transmitted revelation and rational inquiry corroborate one another.

However, the proponents of the innovated speculative theology condemned by the early generations and leading scholars—namely, the Jahmiyyah, the Mu'tazilah, and those later figures claiming adherence to the Sunnah who followed them—introduced into the fundamentals of their religion both a doctrinal claim and a proof for it. They attributed to the followers of the various religions a position stated by neither the Book nor the Sunnah, and they sought to establish it by a method having no basis in either the Book or the Sunnah. Thus, both the position they formulated and attributed to the followers of the various religions and the proof they advanced for it were innovations in revealed law, neither having any basis in the Book or the Sunnah. Yet their followers supposed this to be the religion of the Muslims. Their opposition to reason was therefore on a par with their opposition to transmitted revelation. They were in turn opposed by the philosophical heretics, who are even more sharply opposed to sound transmitted revelation and clear reason (2).

What we have mentioned here is (3) among the means by which one knows the temporal origination of everything besides Allah and the impossibility that any particular entity in the universe could share Allah’s pre-eternity. It establishes the required conclusion under every conceivable supposition. It may be expressed in various formulations and structured in various forms of argument (4). For when the underlying material is sound, it can be cast into many forms, and through such recasting its soundness becomes evident—in contrast to those arguments which are