derived from the argument used by those who affirm that Allah can be seen. They argued that seeing Allah is possible because Allah is able to enable us to see Him, since He exists, and only what is nonexistent cannot be seen. Their discussion of this argument resembled that of those who affirm Allah’s being above creation: sometimes they appealed to the self-evident knowledge that Allah Most High is capable of this, and sometimes they established it through analogical reasoning.

Seeing is something that substances and accidents have in common, so their visibility must rest on something common to both. Nothing common to both can serve this role except existence, for coming into being cannot be the cause. Thus, existence is what makes visibility possible. This method of analogical reasoning is well known from Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī. Various well-known objections have been raised against it, as al-Shahrastānī and others have mentioned. For this reason, some of his followers adopted a different approach, including al-Qādī