and if this is the meaning that “dependence” can bear here, then the statement means: if He had an essential attribute inseparable from Him, or if occupying space were inseparable from Him, then it would necessarily accompany Him and never be separable from Him. In that case, what is entailed and what entails it are identical, and this amounts to stating a tautology. It is like saying: if His existence were necessary in itself, He would depend upon Himself. The meaning is simply that His own self necessarily accompanies itself in such a way that its nonexistence is impossible.

Minds fall into error here, and doubts and misconceptions arise in many people’s hearts, only because of the objectionable implications of the expression “dependence upon another.” These people deliberately took this expression and used it in a sense other than its familiar meaning in the language, calling the inseparability of His attributes from Him “dependence upon another.” Thus, they expressed sound meanings—indeed, meanings whose reality is known by rational necessity, and whose reality no rational person doubts so long as he remains rational—using ambiguous, equivocal expressions that may also convey false meanings from which the Creator, glorified and exalted be He, must be declared free.

This equivocation was a way in which they associated Allah with His creation, and a form of their associating partners with Allah and setting others as His equals: they brought together, under a single expression, meanings that necessarily apply to Allah and meanings that cannot possibly apply to Him, then used it to deny