who maintain that existence is one and is Allah, whether understood in the one sense or the other. Whoever interprets it as absolute existence conditioned by absoluteness must conclude that He does not exist in external reality. Whoever interprets it as absolute existence considered without stipulation can at most identify Him with the existence of created things, a part of them, or something inhering in them. All these views are among the most plainly false on rational grounds and the most manifest expressions of disbelief in religion.

Scholars of rational inquiry, such as al-Qādī Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, Abū al-Ma‘ālī, and al-Ghazālī, have demonstrated the falsity of the position that makes Him absolute existence. The argument runs as follows: every existent has a reality peculiar to it, by which it is distinguished from and distinct from everything else. That being so, its possessing that particular reality