Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

The existence of God 209
Arguments from particularisation
This is the main form of argument used by early Ash‘arites, and is
often used by Mu‘tazilites and later Ash‘arites. It turns on the notion of
particularisation (takhs _
ıs _
), which has its background in a trend distinctly
characteristic of classical kalam, stemming from the sense that
randomness of any kind, in either quantity or quality, is inconceivable.
Every seemingly random fact about the world or things therein thus calls
for explanation. Different instances of this type of proof cite different
facts. The earliest arguments were relatively simple and departed from
the atomist framework of classical kalam, as in the following two
arguments advanced by the Ash‘arite theologian al-Baqillanı (d.1013).
He argues that we observe identical things coming into being at
different times. If the occurrence of one thing at a particular moment is
due to an intrinsic quality thereof, all similar things should occur at the
same time. It thus appears that nothing intrinsic to the thing itself could
make it more likely to occur at a particular moment rather than at
another moment, or more likely to occur at a given moment than
another, similar thing. Therefore, there must be an external voluntary
effecter, who causes particular things to occur at particular moments.
Baqillanı further argues that objects in this world have different
shapes, since they consist of different arrangements of atoms. Yet it is
conceivable for each object to have an arrangement different from the
one it actually has:
What is square can be round, and what is round square. What has the
shape of one particular animal can have that of another. Each object
may lose its shape to take on a different shape. It is inconceivable
that what has a certain particular shape will have it by virtue of
itself, or because it is possible for it to have it. Otherwise, if [the
latter] were the case, [the object] would have to take on every shape
that it may possibly take, all at the same time, so that it would
acquire all dissimilar shapes simultaneously. 46
The absurdity of this, Baqillanı continues, proves that the shapes of
objects must have been determined by a ‘‘shaper’’, possessed of will.
Both arguments are occasionalistic and presuppose classical
Ash‘arite atomism and a rejection of natural causality. Things, we are
told, do not come into being at particular moments with particular
characteristics because of any natural factors, such as intrinsic properties
therein or a causal nexus between one moment and another. There
is no natural necessity determining the way things actually are. All
things, rather, consist of identical atoms and of different accidents
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