give rise to anything except through the Lord’s action in bringing it about and causing it to occur [in it] (1), just as no event proceeds from any other animal except through the Lord’s creating it and causing it to occur in that animal. Their position thus wavers between wholesale denial and a particular denial (2) in which they are worse than the Qadariyya (3). Yet their refutation was directed only against the Qadariyya, who are better than they are in either case.

What they cited from Aristotle’s discourse on this matter has already been discussed (4), and its errors and misguidance have been explained elsewhere. It has also been shown that these people are among those furthest from knowing Allah and from understanding His creation, command, attributes, and acts, and that the Jews and Christians are far better than they are in this regard. The method followed by Aristotle and the ancients to establish the First Cause was based on voluntary motion—namely, the motion of the celestial sphere—and, as already noted, they established only a final cause.

When Ibn Sīnā and later thinkers like him saw the misguidance inherent in this method, they turned instead to the method based on existence, necessity, and contingency. They stole it from the approach (5) of the speculative theologians among the Muʿtazila and others. The latter argued from what is temporally originated to an Originator, whereas the former argued from the contingent to the Necessary Existent. This method does establish the existence of a necessary existent; establishing its specific identity, however, requires another proof. They followed (6)—