even though some of what it encompassed will take place after the Resurrection. Therefore, that specific, created decree need not be earlier than every other creature that had already been brought into being.

Numerous reports transmitted from the Companions, the Successors, and others state that when Allah—exalted is He—had His Throne upon the water, He fashioned the heaven from the vapor rising out of that water and caused the earth to dry. Likewise, at the very beginning of the Torah it is related that the water already existed, that a wind was moving over it, and that from that same water Allah created the heaven and the earth.

These firmly established accounts from our Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah agree with what the People of the Book, both Jews and Christians, possess in the Torah. All of them corroborate one another: Allah created this universe, its heavens and its earth, in six days, then He rose over the Throne, and before that there were already created things such as the water and the Throne. Thus, nowhere does the divine revelation state that the heavens and the earth were produced out of absolute nothingness, nor that nothing at all existed before them.

Moreover, Allah has repeatedly declared that He is the Creator of everything and the Lord of everything. This flatly contradicts those who claim that the universe proceeds from Him by necessity and that it is merely His effect, for creating a thing necessarily entails bringing it into existence.

No Arab has ever said that something can be both originated and eternal without beginning; describing a created thing as eternal is even more foreign to their language. People unanimously agree that every created entity is contingent and originated, and in Arabic such a thing is called ḥādith or muḥdath. They only differ over whether every ḥādith and muḥdath must also be termed makhlūq (created).