from being called a “birth”; rather, birth can only arise from two distinct sources.

Accordingly, anyone who claims that God has a child is unavoidably committed—however he may define “birth”—to saying that God has a consort and that the child is something newly produced.

For this reason the Exalted One said:

"Yet they ascribe the jinn to God as partners, although He created them, and in their ignorance they attribute to Him sons and daughters. Glory be to Him! Exalted is He above what they invent. The Originator of the heavens and the earth—how could He have a child when He has no consort? He created everything, and He has full knowledge of all things." ⦗al-Anʿām 6:100-101⦘

Here God poses a rhetorical question of denial to demonstrate the impossibility of His having a child when He has no consort, for offspring come only from two parents. This point must be borne in mind: it is unknown—indeed inconceivable—that something intrinsic to a single entity should be described as “generated” from it, especially its own essential attributes such as knowledge and life, and all the more so the eternal, pre-existent attributes that necessarily belong to the Lord of the worlds, who has always and will always be characterized by them. Even the necessary attributes of a created being—his life, power, and the like—are not said by any rational person to be generated from him.

No one with sound understanding says that the sky’s color or its expanse is generated by the sky itself, or that the sun’s size and its inherent light are generated by the sun, nor does anyone claim that the heat and light intrinsic to fire are generated by the fire.