a necessitated effect, and whose effect could not exist unless it were a necessitating cause in this sense. Since necessity and impossibility in contingent things depend on Allah Most High’s will, nothing is comparable to His will, just as nothing is comparable to Him. Whoever draws analogies between His will and anything else, or likens it to anything else, is like someone who draws analogies between Him and anything else, or likens Him to anything else. This constitutes associating partners with Him and assigning Him rivals, counterparts and equals. Such likeness is inherently impossible, because His likeness to another would require one to possess the attributes of the other, which would entail combining two contradictions, as explained previously.

Furthermore, they liken Him to another in a respect that would constitute deficiency and incapacity in that other, even if it existed. Yet He—glory be to Him—is not to be likened or equated with another even in perfections, let alone deficiencies.

Thus, this is false on three grounds. First, this attribute is not established in anything other than Him, such that He and that other could be subsumed under a universal proposition in a syllogistic inference, or He could be likened to it in an inference