of the Maker and of the revealed law, whose foundation is justice. Hence Allah Most High says:

“Or were they created by nothing, or are they the creators?”

The two Sahih collections relate from Jubayr ibn Mut‘im that, when he came to ransom the captives of Badr, he said: “I found the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, reciting Sūrat al-Tūr during the Maghrib prayer. When I heard this verse, ‘Or were they created by nothing, or are they the creators?’ I felt my heart split open.”

This is an exhaustive division of the possibilities, which Allah presents as a rhetorical question rejecting these alternatives, to show that these premises are self-evidently known and cannot be denied. He says:

“Or were they created by nothing?”

That is, without a creator who created them? Or did they create themselves? They know that both alternatives are false. It therefore follows that they have a Creator who created them—glorified and exalted is He.

There are many ways to establish this. For example, one may say: Whatever exists either has no beginning or has come into being, and whatever has come into being must depend on something without beginning. An existent is either necessary or contingent, and whatever is contingent must depend on something necessary. There are other arguments of this kind.

In every case, it necessarily follows that among existing things there is a being that has no beginning and exists necessarily in itself, and a contingent being that came into existence after not existing. Both share in what is denoted by “existence.” Yet he can conceive of no existent in the observable world except a body. He is therefore subject to the same charge he has brought against others: likening Allah to creation and attributing corporeality to Him.

It is thus clear that anyone’s denial of any of Allah’s attributes on the basis of such a method is false