namely, that an absolute existence possessing no distinctive characteristics should necessitate every distinctive characteristic in existence, without any cause necessitating such determination?

These people criticize those speculative theologians who affirm events that come into existence without a cause that itself comes into existence. Yet they themselves affirm such events without anyone bringing them into existence, and affirm determinations in existing things without any determining cause whatsoever. This resembles the claim that a contingent being, which has no existence of itself, can exist without a being whose existence is necessary in itself.

Those among the Kullābīs who agree with these people on certain matters affirm a limited number of attributes distinctive to Him ن and assign particular characteristics to them, then demand a determining cause for attributes other than these 0 Hence, those who follow this path ultimately affirm existence, then make it absolute, and fall into a greater contradiction than others. For every existent is distinguished by its own distinctive properties, whether … from something else; he seeks what is intrinsically impossible. Whoever describes the Necessary Being in this way has described Him with a characteristic of what is intrinsically impossible ن This is where their position ultimately leads: affirming two contradictories together.

Some of their Sufis then say that two contradictories may be affirmed together, and that spiritual unveiling establishes things that contradict the clear dictates of reason.

[Al-Shahrastānī’s discussion in Nihāyat al-Iqdām]

When al-Shahrastānī relied on this approach in debating those who affirmed Allah’s being above and distinct from creation, His attributes pertaining to action, and others of this kind, he raised against his own position necessary implications that