the Lord’s bringing it into being, as with the portions of time and motion that come into existence little by little. Thus, Allah Most High says:

“His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”

(Yā Sīn: 82)

An event therefore comes into being immediately after the Lord brings it into being, just as breakage follows the process of breaking, and divorce follows the act of pronouncing divorce. This entails events occurring successively, one after another.

This is not impossible according to those leading scholars of the religious communities and philosophers who hold this position. It differs from the position of those who profess philosophy and those who agree with them that the effect accompanies its cause in time. As they say: “The celestial sphere is eternal by virtue of its cause’s eternity, and coexists with it in time.”

If these people say that events come into being without a newly occurring cause, they incur the very difficulty they sought to escape. If, instead, they say, “Rather, with every event, something comes into being simultaneously with that event and with its cause attaining complete efficacy,” this entails infinitely many events coming into being at a single instant, without anything newly proceeding from the eternal cause.

They are therefore committed to an infinite regress in the attainment of complete causal efficacy as such, rather than in the production of a particular effect. This is impossible, involving, as their position does, infinitely many events at a single instant.

They and all other rational people acknowledge that this is invalid. Only Mu‘ammar, the proponent of ma‘ānī (“meanings”), disputed it. Its invalidity has already become clear, for it is an infinite regress in causal efficacy as such, not in the production of particular effects. They thus incur the same impossibility incurred by Mu‘ammar’s followers. They also incur the impossibility and contradiction peculiar to their own position: their assertion that the effect is present alongside