If this argument establishes anything, it establishes only that composition—which is an accident—came into being. It does not establish that substances came into being except through the first method: establishing that composition came into being and that an infinite succession of originated events is impossible.

This method is followed by the Karrāmiyya and others who say that Allah is a beginningless, eternal body, and that He had always been at rest, then moved when He created the world. They argue that created bodies came into being because they are composed of indivisible atoms and therefore admit of combination and separation. They are never free of combination or separation, which are originated accidents. Whatever is never free of originated events must itself have come into being.

The Lord, however, is, in their view, one and does not admit of combination or separation, but had always been at rest. Rest, according to them, is a privation: the absence of motion in something capable of motion, as is also maintained by those philosophers who hold this view.

These people say that the Creator had always been free of originated events until they came to subsist in Him, unlike bodies composed of indivisible atoms, which are never free of combination and separation.

[Continuation of al-Shahrastānī’s statement]

Al-Shahrastānī said:

“Abū al-Hasan sometimes followed an approach to establishing that man came into being based on his being formed from a drop of mingled fluid and his passage through the stages of creation and successive phases of natural formation. There is no doubt that he neither transformed himself nor altered