making the positive statement has only to point out the place where the coconuts are found to easily win. Whereas the one who denies it can prove his case only by searching the whole face of the earth and demonstrating that the coconuts are not to be found anywhere. So one who makes a report of Paradise and the realm of bliss and asserts that they exist wins his case by only demonstrating through illumination a shadow or distillation of it, like in the cinema, while those who deny it can only win by proving their denial by seeing the whole universe and all time from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and demonstrating it. It is because of this that the investigative scholars have agreed on the rule “on condition they are not inherently impossible, denials which are not specific but look to the whole universe like the truths of belief, cannot be proved,” and have accepted it as a fundamental principle.
In consequence of this definite truth, while the opposing ideas of thousands of philosophers should not cast the slightest doubt, or even suspicion, on even a single truthful report concerning the questions of belief, you may understand what a lunacy it is to fall into doubt at the denials of a handful of philosophers who concerning the pillars of belief understand no further than their eyes see, have no heart, are blind, and have grown distant from spiritual matters. For the pillars of faith have been agreed upon by one hundred and twenty thousand expert scholars and truthful reporters with their positive assertions, and innumerable specialists in the field of reality and investigative scholars.
Also, we see with our own eyes as clearly as daylight both in ourselves and all around us a comprehensive mercy and all-embracing wisdom and constant bestowal of grace. We observe too the traces and manifestations of an awesome sovereignty of dominicality, a precise and lofty justice, and a proud and glorious government. Indeed, the wisdom which attaches instances of wisdom to a tree to the number of its fruits and flowers; and the mercy which bestows bounties and favours on every human being to the number of his faculties, members, and feelings; and the proud, yet gracious justice which deals blows at rebellious peoples like those of Noah, Hud, and Salih (Peace be upon them) and the ‘Ad, Thamud, and people of Pharoah, and protects the rights of the least living being; and the verse:
And among His signs is this, that heaven and earth stand by His command; then when He calls you, by a single call, from the earth, behold, you [straightway] come forth1
all state the following with a majestic conciseness:
Just as at the summons of their commander and the sound of the bugle,
Qur’an, 30:25.