category, just as His being existent and self-subsisting does not take Him beyond what is possible for the category of whatever exists and is self-subsisting. Thus, if whatever exists and is self-subsisting must be either necessarily existent or contingent, and either beginningless or originated, He must fall within one or the other of these categories.

And if distinctness in essential reality or time does not preclude a thing from being either a substrate for something that inheres in it or something inhering in a substrate—and whatever inheres in a substrate depends upon it, while the substrate cannot exist without something inhering in it, since an accident depends upon a substance and a substance necessarily entails an accident, and may also be said to depend upon it—then, if He is held to inhere in the world, it follows that He depends upon the world and needs it, and that His existence cannot subsist without the world, even though the world is self-subsisting without Him. This would imply that the world has no need of Allah Most High, whereas Allah depends upon it, and that He needs the world more than the world needs Him—or that each needs the other. This has been explicitly stated by the advocates of union, such as the author of al-Fusūs, who said