provides—on the question of whether contingent events can subsist in the Lord—no proof for their impossibility except this single argument: were a substance to accept an accident, it would never be free of it.(1) Yet you, too, have supplied absolutely no evidence for that assertion. You have conceded that both your own colleagues and the Muʿtazilites maintain that the Exalted is above receiving contingent events, but do so without any proof at all. Where, then, is the evidence you claimed to possess, let alone evidence that is decisive?

When a rational person reflects on this, he realizes that such people are speaking about Allah without knowledge and uttering falsehood about Him, just as do the polytheists and the People of the Scripture.

If you object, saying, “We have already demonstrated this with respect to the modes (akwān), such as conjunction and separation,”(2) the response is: You are right in that anything capable(3) of being joined or separated must in fact be either joined or separated. Yet this cannot be generalized to all attributes and accidents; at most it establishes an analogue of the point in the case of the Lord. One might therefore argue: “If His Essence were capable(4) of conjunction or separation, it would have to be either conjoined or separated. However, even if your opponent denies that His Essence admits these two states, he is not thereby compelled to deny that it admits other attributes and actions, as you contend.

And if he does concede this and says, ‘He is Ahad, Samad—the original sense of samad being a compact entity without any hollowness,’ he will add:(5) ‘His compactness, like His knowledge and power, is among the necessary attributes that can never be absent; it is not one of the contingent events. By contrast, the attributes of a created substance are liable to vanish, for…’