he may be answered as follows:

Even if it is conceded that this is not self-evident, it is established by the many proofs showing that everything other than Allah is contingent: it admits of existence and nonexistence. Indeed, it came into being. Everything other than Him depends upon Him, and whatever depends upon another is contingent. These proofs also establish that there is only One who exists in His own right, independent of all else, eternal and beginningless. The proofs of this have been presented elsewhere, and they establish the intended conclusion.

However, the speculative theologians among the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah, together with those who agreed with them among the Ashʿariyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and others, sought to establish this by arguing that the world is never devoid of accidents that come into being, and that whatever is never devoid of such occurrences must itself have come into being, since a beginningless succession of occurrences is impossible. This entailed that the First Principle had always been neither speaking by His will and power nor doing anything. Indeed, it had not even been possible for Him to speak whenever He willed or to do whatever He willed. Rather, this was impossible and therefore could not fall within His power. It follows that He became capable after not having been capable, and became an agent—indeed, one who speaks by His will—after not having been so. It also follows that action became possible after having been impossible, without anything new arising to necessitate its change from impossibility to possibility, along with other consequences, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

All the early Muslims and the imams condemned innovated speculative theology and its proponents, declaring that they spoke without knowledge and opposed the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the early Muslims. Their discourse, moreover, is ignorance and misguidance, contrary to reason just as it is contrary to revelation, as has been explained at length elsewhere.