it is still not necessary—how can their claim be conceded that an effect can never fail to follow from a cause that necessitates by its very essence? This claim has no basis in reality.

This makes clear that these people associated partners with Allah, set up equals to Him, and ascribed to Him an evil likeness. They acted just like their brethren who claimed that He begets daughters, although they themselves would not be pleased to have daughters, and made His slave His partner, although they themselves would not accept a slave as a partner.

These people made the effect inseparable from Him, such that He cannot prevent it in any way, by analogy with causes that necessitate by their very essence. Yet they have found no cause whose effect is inseparable from it and which cannot prevent that effect in any way. Thus they described Allah in terms from which they exempt created beings, ascribing to Him forms of begetting and incapacity that they would not ascribe even to things that are made.

For this reason, the position of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah is that nothing in existence fully and independently produces an effect except Allah Most High. There is no Lord besides Him and no deity other than Him. Hence some theologians who affirm the divine attributes, such as al-Asharī, said that Allah’s most distinctive attribute is the power to create. There is no doubt that this is among Allah’s most distinctive attributes, even if it is not uniquely the most distinctive. But al-Asharī expounded this principle with a precision that set him apart from all the other proponents of error among