The Arab polytheists were better than these people in affirming Allah’s oneness, for the utmost these people achieve is to establish causes for some existing things.

Yet causes do not act independently: they require a cooperating factor and the absence of anything that counteracts them. Moreover, these people may posit causes and causal principles that have no reality, such as the intellects they claim brought everything else into existence.

As for the dualist Magians, they are the people best known for affirming two gods. Yet they agree that the good and praiseworthy god is light, which produces good things. As for darkness—which produces evils—they hold two views concerning it.

The first is that it came into being, arising from an evil thought on the part of light. On this view, darkness would be something produced by light.

But these are ignorant people: they sought to absolve the Lord of producing a particular evil, only to make Him the producer of the very source of evil. They attributed to Him an evil thought—one of the gravest imperfections—and made it the cause that brought the source of evil into being.

Their other view is that darkness is beginningless, like light. These people thus affirmed two beginningless beings, but did not regard them as alike or as acting jointly. Rather, they praise one and condemn the other.

Hence, those among the heretics who held such views, such as the physician Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī