the existent effects preceded by nonexistence must owe its existence to its cause bringing it into being either while it exists or while it does not exist. The latter is impossible, since existence and nonexistence cannot coincide. Thus, the only remaining possibility is that its cause brings it into being while it exists—not in the sense that it brought it into being after it already existed, but in the sense that whatever existence is posited for it is not independent of its cause. Rather, it depends upon that cause and would not exist without it. In that case, there is no distinction between an effect whose existence is preceded by nonexistence and one whose existence is not.

[Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary]

I say: This is the argument of Ibn Sīnā and others like him for the effect’s temporal concurrence with its cause. It is an unsound argument; and even assuming its validity, it does not help al-Āmidī here. For people hold three views concerning an effect’s temporal concurrence with its cause and a product’s concurrence with its agent:

[Views on an effect’s temporal concurrence with its second cause]

One view holds that the effect must coincide with the causal action, such that it does not occur later in time: it neither follows immediately afterward nor occurs after a delay. This is the position of those eternalists who maintain that the world is beginningless and proceeds from a beginningless necessitating cause. Their position is the most unsound and most contradictory of the three. For if the effect were as they describe, it would follow that nothing could come into existence in the world. If a complete cause necessarily entails its effect’s temporal concurrence with it, and the Lord were a complete cause from eternity, then it would follow that there must coexist with Him