and clouds, animals, plants, minerals, and other forms and accidents. Their existence cannot be necessary, since they were once nonexistent; nor can it be impossible, since they have come into existence. Thus, these things are self-evidently known to be contingent—neither necessary nor impossible.

Al-Rāzī then made this method followed by Ibn Sīnā the principal basis for establishing the existence of the Creator, as he stated in his treatise Establishing the Necessary Existent, Nihāyat al-‘Uqūl (The Ultimate Reach of Intellects), al-Matālib al-‘Āliya (The Sublime Inquiries), and other works. Yet none of the renowned leading Muslim scholars of rational inquiry followed this approach. Indeed, none of them used this method to establish the existence of the Creator, much less made it their principal basis and founded it upon the premises we shall discuss.

I have seen contemporaries who write on the foundations of religion and, following these thinkers, make this principle the foundation of religion in its entirety. Some, however, offer no proof; instead, their principal basis for denying a limit is the impossibility of the existence of what does not