or a generator. This contradicts their statement, “From what is one, only one proceeds.” For sense perception and reason establish that nothing proceeds from what is one, and that nothing proceeds or is generated except from two things. The Creator would therefore need a counterpart, partner, and consort, with the world generated from the two of them. He, glorified be He, says:

“Yet they have made the jinn partners with Allah, though He created them, and have falsely attributed sons and daughters to Him without knowledge. Glory be to Him! Exalted is He above what they describe. {100} The Originator of the heavens and the earth! How could He have a child when He has no consort? He created all things, and He has knowledge of everything. {101}” [al-An'ām 100–101]

And the Exalted says:

“They say, ‘Allah has taken a son.’ Glory be to Him! He is the Self-Sufficient.” [Yūnus 68]

By making Him the generator of the world and asserting that the world accompanies Him in such a way that He cannot precede it or independently bring it into being, they have made Him dependent on part of the world and in need of something other than Himself, in the two respects explained above. This contradicts their assertion that He is necessarily existent in Himself. Such is their habitual practice: contradiction and the simultaneous affirmation and denial of the same thing. Those theologians who agree with them that He is not above the world, but rather