is living, and a living being either hears and sees or is mute and deaf. He also mentioned other arguments. That rational argument, too, could have been formulated through this a fortiori method, but this is not the place to explain it. The aim is merely to draw attention to this noble principle and its universal benefit. It is the principle taught by the Book and the Sunnah, and is itself demonstrably sound and rationally intelligible. His words in the Quran, “And to Allah belongs the highest attribute,” occurring in two places in His Book, explain this principle.

The point here is that, since He—glorified be He—has the highest attribute, which entails a fortiori reasoning, His being free of division, dissolution, and disintegration is part of what is meant by His being al-Samad (the Self-Sufficient Master) and al-Qayyūm (the Self-Subsisting Sustainer), as explained above. It is well known that, if anything other than Him possesses a form of cohesion involving a degree of undividedness, its self-subsistence is not like that of the Truth, nor is its undividedness like that of the Truth—glorified and exalted is He. Rather, He is the One who subsists in Himself, whose self-subsistence is necessary and whose nonexistence is impossible, and He is