Either he was merely expansive in his wording, or he slipped in his understanding; otherwise, the carefully weighed position of the sharp-sighted investigators among the Sunnite theologians and others is this: the thing that exists outside the mind is the very reality that exists there. There are not two entities—one called “existence,” a substance or an accident, and another a reality that is qualified by that existence.

The word wujūd (existence) can, to be sure, be used as a verbal noun: it may be the infinitive of wajada–yajidu (to come to be), the infinitive of awjada-hu Allāh (God caused it to exist), or the infinitive of wajadtu-hu, ajidu-hu (I found it). Yet in the present discussion these verbal nouns as such are not what is meant. God’s bringing the creatures into being is His creating them. According to the majority, this is an act distinct from the creatures themselves, whereas many dialecticians hold that the very act of creation is created.

As for the infinitive of “I found the thing,” as in the Almighty’s words, “and he found God before him” (Qurʾān 24:39), this denotes an act that inheres in the finder, like seeing or direct observation. Still, when they say “this exists,” they do not mean “this is seen and witnessed,” even though the term originally derives from that usage. Whatever is firmly established in itself is, in principle, open to being found—seen and observed—by a perceiver, unlike the nonexistent that is ruled out of being. Hence whatever can thus be found is called “existent.”

When they say “it was found (wujida),” their only intent is that the thing came to be and occurred; they are not indicating that someone else found it, even though the verb is in the passive voice. If what is meant is simply that it came to be and took place, then its “coming-to-be” and its “occurring” are no more than the verbal nouns of kāna–yakūnu and ḥaṣala–yaḥṣulu. Once it has become and taken place, however, the entity that has come to be is identical with its existent reality: there is not, in addition to that reality, some separate existence inhering in it after its actualization that is other than its very reality.