And those would-be philosophers were further removed from understanding the religion than the theologians *) (1): some of them supposed that this was part of the religion, while others were better informed about revealed teachings than their peers. They therefore rejected whatever the theologians said for which they possessed no revealed authority. As for matters for which they did possess revealed authority, they adopted one of two positions: if it accorded with their rational conclusions, they affirmed it both inwardly and outwardly; otherwise, they grouped it with comparable matters and said that the Messengers had spoken of it (2) by way of figurative representation and imaginative depiction in order to meet a need.

Ibn Rushd and those like him follow this approach. For this reason, they were closer to Islam than Ibn Sīnā and his like, and in practical matters they were more observant of the limits prescribed by the Sacred Law than those who neglected the obligations of Islam and deemed its prohibitions lawful. Nevertheless, each of these groups displayed deviation and distortion to the extent that it contravened the Quran and Sunnah, while possessing truth and wisdom to the extent that it agreed with them.

For this reason, on the questions of the temporal origination of the world and the resurrection of bodies, Ibn Rushd outwardly suspended judgment and treated both positions as tenable, although inwardly he inclined more toward the position of his predecessors. In Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), he responded to Abū Hāmid with a rebuttal much of which was mistaken, while Abū Hāmid was correct. Some of what was at issue he treated as a doctrine of Ibn Sīnā rather than of his predecessors, attributing the error in it to Ibn Sīnā. In other parts, he spoke condescendingly toward Abū Hāmid and accused him of a lack of fairness because the argument was built upon corrupt theological principles, such as the claim that the Lord does nothing by reason of any cause or for any wise purpose, and that an agent possessing power and choice prefers one of two things within his power over the other without any determining factor. In still other parts, he was utterly perplexed because the issue was ambiguous.