you mention it or turn away from it. A person’s refusal to look at the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sky does not negate their existence, nor does it prevent one of the two contradictories from holding true. Rather, ‘the sun’ must necessarily be either existent or nonexistent. How, then, could your heart and tongue turning away from the remembrance of Allah negate His existence and entail that neither contradictory holds? In reality, He must be either existent or nonexistent.”
Likewise, whoever says, “I do not say that He is existent; rather, I say that He is not nonexistent,” should be told:
“Negating one of two contradictories affirms the other. You have merely changed the wording, since saying that He is not nonexistent necessarily entails that He is existent. If He is not nonexistent, either He is existent or He is neither existent nor nonexistent. This ‘third alternative’ entails that neither contradictory holds, which is self-evidently invalid. Thus, if He is not nonexistent, He must be existent.”
If he says, “Rather, I commit myself to saying that He is nonexistent,” he should be told:
“Observation and reason establish that existing things exist. It is also known that some of them come into being after not having existed. We know, for example, that we ourselves came into being after not existing, and that clouds, rain, plants, and animals come into being. These and similar things are among the signs to which Allah Most High draws attention in His words:
‘Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day, the ships that sail the sea with what benefits people, and the water Allah sends down from the sky, thereby bringing the earth to life after