For this reason, many among these people deny the Creator while acknowledging the existence of a necessarily existent being. Yet even so, the former group’s method yields only knowledge of what He shares with all other makers, since a universal proposition indicates only what is common to them. Thus, what they know of His bringing things into being is no more than what they know of other animals doing so—even a mosquito. Clearly, this is very scant knowledge of what is due to the Lord. They know nothing of their Lord’s bringing things into being beyond that in which they make all animals His partners. They are therefore further from knowing Allah Most High than the polytheists of whom Allah said:

“Most of them do not believe in Allah without associating others with Him.”
{106}

[Yūsuf 106]

We know that the greatness of a maker’s power and work is reflected in what he makes, just as we know that the builder of a large house and the weaver of a large piece of cloth are greater than the builder of a small house and the weaver of a small piece of cloth. But the universal proposition they mention establishes that He is greater than all other makers in proportion to the greatness of the world compared with everything those makers produce. This is only part of the greatness and incomparability that are due to the Lord. The acts of bringing things into being themselves, however, differ to a degree greater than this disparity. For although what the Lord brings into being is greater, so too is His very act of bringing it into being, and it does not belong to