whereas these very people have allowed precisely that *) (1).

[Moreover, the Kullābiyya (2) do not deny the subsistence of temporal events in Him on account of any negation (3) of the attributes, for they maintain that the particular eternal attributes subsist in Him. They deny only the pre-eternity of the kind, because its particular instances arise anew and are therefore temporal events.

Their principal basis for denying this is the claim that whatever admits of temporal events has never been devoid of them. This premise is false according to people of reason, and several of their most astute thinkers—including al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others—have acknowledged this. As for Abū al-Maʿālī and his peers, they have produced no rational proof for this claim. They have relied solely upon the inconsistencies (4) in the positions of those who disputed them, including the Karrāmiyya, the philosophers, and others.

The mutual contradiction among the positions of these groups shows that the two positions, taken together, cannot both be sound; it does not establish that either one in particular is correct. Accordingly, if a third position can be maintained while one or both of them (5) are false, it does not follow that the views of the Kullābiyya and all the divergent groups that oppose the Book and the Sunnah are sound. All they possess is the refutation by some of them of the positions of the others and the exposure of their inconsistencies; they have no sound position that can be maintained.

For this reason, the benefit derived from their discourse is that each side refutes the discourse of the other; hence none of those positions should be held as a matter of belief. If the truth brought by the Messenger is then known, it is the correct position, in full accord with the clear dictates of reason. Otherwise, what is gained from this is deliverance from