Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

the inanity of their claims, this is not worthy of him-but rather of very bad
men. And how could it be otherwise? For the greater part of the subtlety
this man acquired-and he surpassed ordinary people through the subtlety
he put in the books he composed-he only acquired from the books of the
philosophers and from their teaching. And even supposing they erred in
something, he ought not to have denied their merit in speculative thought
and in those ideas through which they trained our understanding. Nay
more, if they had only invented logic, he and anyone else who
understands the importance of this science ought to thank them for it, and
he himself was conscious of the value of logic and urged its study and
wrote treatises about it, and he says that there is no other way to learn the
truth than through this science, and he had even such an exaggerated
view of logic that he extracted it from the book of God, the holy Qur’an. ‘
And is it allowed to one who is indebted to their books and to their
teaching to such an extent that he excelled his contemporaries and that
his fame in Islam became immense, is it really allowed to such a man to
speak in this way of them, and to censure them so openly, so absolutely,
and condemn their sciences? And suppose they erred in certain
theological questions, we can only argue against their mistakes by the
rules they have taught us in the logical sciences, and we are convinced
that they will not blame us when we show them a mistake which might be
found in their opinions. And indeed their aim was only the acquisition of
truth, and if their only merit consisted in this, it would suffice for their
praise, although nobody has said anything about theological problems that
can be absolutely relied upon and nobody is guaranteed against mistakes
but those whom God protects in a divine, superhuman way, namely the
prophets, and I do not know what led this man to this attack against such
statements; may God protect me against failings in word and in deed and
forgive me if I fail!
And what he says of the belief held by those who follow the Divine Law
in these things is in agreement with what is said by the renowned
philosophers, for when it is said that God’s knowledge and attributes
cannot be described by, or compared to, the attributes of the creature, so
that it cannot even be asserted that they are essence or an addition to the
essence, this expresses the thought of genuine philosophers and other
true thinkers, and God is the Saviour, the Leader.
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