This matter is treated in detail elsewhere; we mention it here only because it lies at the root of the confusion, disputes, and agitation that surround these questions. If the sensory composition they claim for observable bodies is groundless, how much more untenable is such a claim with respect to unseen realities whose true nature is unknown—and even more so with respect to the so-called “intellectual composition” they allege when they say, “If He possessed an essence, existence would be an attribute of that essence; thus He would be composite, and His necessary existence would be caused by something other than Himself.”

The answer is: Rather, He does have a distinct reality by which He is set apart from everything else; indeed every existent thing has its own specific reality, and the Creator is most deserving of that. As for their assertion that existence would be an attribute of that reality, such a statement could only apply if the term “existence” (wujūd) were treated purely as the verbal noun of wajada—“to find”—so that one would say, “He found a finding,” or “He found it finding.”

There is no doubt that, in Arabic, the word wujūd is the verbal noun of wajada—wajada yajidu wujūdan—as in the Almighty’s words, “and he found Allah there before him” (Q 24:39). Yet when scholars and rational investigators say, “This is existent,” they do not mean that someone else has found it, nor that someone else has produced for it an existence inhering within it. What they intend is simply that it is real and established, neither nonexistent nor negated. Thus, when it is said, “This man is existent,” the meaning is not that some separate entity called “existence” has attached itself to him as an attribute. Rather, our statement “this man is existent” means that he is firmly realized, not nonexistent or null. His existence in external reality is not an additional layer over and above his concrete essence; rather, the very reality that constitutes his essence in the external world is identical with his established existence outside the mind.