 If the five eternal theory was considered problematic by contemporaries and later authors, al-Rāzī’s views on religion were considered utterly outrageous and heretical. In his Proofs of Prophecy, Abū Ḥātim selectively quotes and paraphrases from a work by al-Rāzī on this topic, and presents him as having flatly denied the validity of prophetic revelation. Accepting this evidence as more or less reliable, some modern-day scholars have celebrated al-Rāzī as a “freethinker” comparable with such daringly unorthodox thinkers as Ibn al-Rāwandī (Urvoy 1996, Stroumsa 1999), or even as having had pagan sympathies (Vallat 2015a, 2015b, 2016). Against this, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī quotes our al-Rāzī as having offered interpretations of the Qurʾān, which were designed to show that this revelatory text and indeed the whole history of prophecy was in agreement with his own philosophy (this evidence is presented and discussed in Rashed 2000, 2008). The bio-bibliographical tradition is also ambiguous in its evidence. For instance al-Bīrūnī, who clearly admired al-Rāzī, admits that he made foolish and obstinate remarks about religion and prophecy. But another broadly favorable witness, Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, says that a supposed work attacking religion was perhaps written by “malicious enemies of al-Rāzī and ascribed to him” (for references, see Adamson 2021: 11).