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

some are single, and that the bodily faculties must be
dispersed in all parts of the body. And the same applies to all
the qualities which are inside and outside man’s body and all
its accidents, attributes, and consequences, so that there is
nothing that is hidden from God in His knowledge of the
universal. But the individual Zaid can only be distinguished
from Amr through the senses, not through the intellect, and
this distinction is based on pointing to a special direction,
whereas the intellect can only understand direction and
space absolutely as universals. And when we say ‘this’ and
‘that’, this is a case of pointing to a special relation of a
sensible thing to the observer as being near to him or far
from him, or in a definite place, and this is impossible where
God is concerned.
This then is the principle in which they believe, and
through it they uproot the Divine Laws absolutely, for this
principle implies that God cannot know whether Zaid obeys
or disobeys Him, since God cannot know any new
occurrences that happen to Zaid, as He does not know the
individual Zaid; for the individual and his acts come into
existence after nonexistence, and as God does not know the
individual, He cannot know his conditions and his actsindeed,
He cannot know that Zaid becomes a heretic or a
true believer, for He can know only the unbelief and the
belief of man in general, not as it is specified in individuals.
Yes, God cannot know Muhammad’s proclaiming himself a
prophet at the time he did, nor can God know this of any
definite prophet; He can only know that some people
proclaim themselves prophets and that they have such-andsuch
qualities, but any individual prophet He cannot know,
for he can only be known by sense-perception. Nor can He
know the acts which proceed from the prophets, since they
are divided as acts of a definite man through the division of
time, and their perception with their diversity implies a
change in the observer.
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