they do profess an Originator of this universe, yet their doctrine inescapably leads to the very nullification espoused by the outright deniers, even if they disavow such a consequence. For the intelligible entities they classify as Necessary Being—such as the ten intellects—prove, on close examination, to exist only in the mind, not in external reality. Likewise, the simple “One” from which they claim the world has emanated is found solely in thought, not in concrete existence, and the “absolute existence” they identify with the Necessary Being is no more than a mental abstraction.

Moreover, they concede—along with every rational person, whether he holds the world to be eternal or originated, and whether he denies or affirms the Creator—that reality must contain a being that is necessary in itself. Yet the mere affirmation of such a necessary being does not amount to acknowledging a Maker unless it is shown to be distinct from the universe. We have detailed elsewhere how the line of argument adopted by Ibn Sīnā and his followers for proving the Maker and the Necessary Being is the weakest and least fruitful of methods, even though later figures—such as the executed Suhrawardī, Fakhr al-Rāzī, al-Āmidī, and others—have extolled it. Its utmost achievement is to establish the presence of a necessary existent, a point over which there is no dispute; the real issue is whether that necessary existent is other than this cosmos.

Their case rests on the principle of negating all attributes—an approach they style as “monotheism,” which we have critiqued at length elsewhere. They argue that the Necessary Existence can be conceived only by stripping away every attribute, for, they insist, affirming attributes entails composition, whereas what is necessary cannot be composite. We have already exposed the sophistry and corruption in this claim. They add, “The world, being a bearer of attributes and therefore composite, cannot be necessary.”