As for affirming that the Divine Essence possesses attributes that subsist in it, this is something acknowledged by virtually all rational people, although they do not call such a relation “composition.” Should anyone give it that name, his disagreement is purely verbal and in no way undermines what has been established by textual and rational proofs.
They then argue: “Whatever is composite is in need of its parts, and its parts are other than it; but the Necessary Existent needs nothing outside Himself.” All of these expressions, however, are equivocal. By “need” (iftiqār) they do not mean the need an effect has for its efficient cause, nor the dependence of a contingent being on the agent that brings it about, for a part of a thing is neither its agent nor the efficient cause that produces it. What they intend is merely mutual implication and conditionality: the existence of the whole entails the existence of its parts and is conditioned by them.
Likewise with the word “part”: they are not speaking of something separable from the whole, for a part of the whole is not separate from that whole.
The same applies to the term “other” (ghayr). At times they mean by “two others” things that could, in principle, be separated by time, place, or existence, or such that one could be known without the other. Yet a component of a whole, or an attribute of a subject, need not be separated from or exist apart from that subject; separation may be possible, but it is not necessary.
The attributes that necessarily belong to the Lord—glorified and exalted is He—can never be detached from Him or exist apart from Him. Accordingly, some people do not deem them “other” than Him, while those who do still concede that His Essence entails them; the attributes neither act upon the Essence nor serve as an efficient cause for it.
The expression “Necessary Existent” denotes that which exists in and of itself, having neither agent nor efficient cause. From this perspective, the Essence of the Almighty Lord and His attributes are necessary existents. The term also signifies that He is free of any substrate in which He subsists, and the Essence