existent in His own right, which entails that He, exalted is He, is not susceptible to increase or decrease. Thus, this is what al-Samad means when applied to Him, the Exalted.”

He may be told: The figurative sense you have assigned to it must be either the meaning of “the Necessary Existent” or the implication you mentioned—namely, that He is not susceptible to increase or decrease. If al-Samad means “the Necessary Existent,” this interpretation contradicts the consensus of the Muslims and that of linguists and Quran commentators. Although the name al-Samad entails His necessary self-existence, it does not mean merely that He is self-existent. Nor was this something unknown to the questioners among the polytheists and the People of the Book, nor is it a matter of dispute among the inhabitants of the earth.

For all people agree that something exists and that not everything that exists can depend on something else; there must be something whose existence does not depend on anything else. Yet proponents of falsehood may claim that it constitutes the foundations of the world, or the like, as maintained by the deniers and negators who openly deny