a thing, to say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”
(Yā Sīn: 82)

These are realities affirmed of Allah Most High before the created being exists. This is why those who deny the divine attributes, among the Mu'tazilah and others, have been inconsistent concerning these matters: sometimes they affirm them in external reality, and sometimes they deny them altogether.

This is also where those who say, “The non-existent is a thing,” went wrong. Since what Allah wills must be distinguished from what He does not will, and similarly in other cases, they mistakenly imagined that this requires the non-existent to have an established reality outside the mind. That is not the case; rather, these things are known to Allah Most High and established in His knowledge.

Others went astray in the opposite direction, such as Hishām al-Fuwatī. Al-Ash'arī reports in his Maqālāt that he would say, “Allah has always known that He is One, with no second,” but would not say, “He has always known things.” He said:

“If I say, ‘He has always known things,’ I thereby affirm that they have always existed alongside Allah.”

When asked, “Do you then say that Allah has always known that things will come into being?” he replied:

“If I say that they will come into being, this refers to them, and one may refer only to something that exists.”

He would not call anything that Allah had not created and that had not come into existence a ‘thing.’