Both positions are mistaken, and we have discussed them at length elsewhere.
Sometimes “matter” means the universal matter shared by bodies, and “form” (1) the universal form shared by bodies. They claim that each is an intelligible substance, but this is an error. What bodies have in common is a universal, and universals exist as universals (2) only in minds, not in external reality. Whatever exists externally is in itself distinct from everything else; nothing else shares in it except in the mind, when it is conceived as a universal.
Bodies are subject to continuity and division—that is, conjunction and separation—and both are accidents. Division is not something subsisting in itself, just as motion is not something subsisting in itself apart from the sensible body upon which continuity and division supervene and which they call hayūlā (prime matter) and matter. This and related matters have been discussed at length elsewhere (3).
Many people may not understand the true import of what they themselves say, what others say, and what the messengers brought, well enough to discern what therein is true and what is false and thus know whether they themselves accord with the plain dictates of reason or contradict them. Whoever among them wishes to present himself as a Muslim couches all this in Islamic terminology: he refers to the body as ālam al-mulk (the realm of dominion), the soul as ālam al-malakūt (the realm of sovereignty), and the intellect as ālam al-jabarūt (the realm of omnipotence)—or vice versa. They also say that the intellects and souls are the angels,