and impedes it, then there is no cause requiring the world’s existence to be delayed beyond the existence of the First Cause itself. How, then, could its existence be delayed for an infinite time, only for it then to come into existence, like someone who was asleep and then awoke?”
These people may be answered with examples such as that of those about whom ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar spoke when someone asked him whether a person in the consecrated state of pilgrimage could kill mosquitoes:
“Look at these people! They ask about the blood of mosquitoes, yet they have killed the son of the daughter of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace!”
Another example is the story told of a man who was committing fornication with a woman while fasting. He said to her:
“Cover your face, for the scholars have disapproved of kissing while fasting.”
Similarly, a Christian is said to have remarked to a Muslim:
“You say that a shepherd is Allah’s Messenger!”
He was answered:
“You say that a fetus in his mother’s womb is God!”
There are many comparable examples in which someone objects to something while accepting what is even more deserving of objection.
For these people said:
“If the world was brought into existence after not existing, it would necessarily depend on something other than the First Cause.”
Yet they have not established that the First Cause originated the world at all. Rather, their position amounts to saying that something else originated the world, or that the world is another independently necessary existent, not something originated, but dependent on the First Cause as a lover depends on the beloved.
They have established even this dependence only through premises which, when subjected to close scrutiny, expose their ignorance and inconsistency.
Thus, even the most they have established does not show at all that the world was originated by the First. Yet they object to those who hold that the First brought the world into existence, on the grounds that whatever comes into being requires a cause that itself comes into being. Could any position be more self-contradictory than this?