The second respect:

Clarifying the question and its answer. The question is this: Does the servant’s created power have a causal effect in bringing his act into existence? If it does, this entails associating partners with Allah; otherwise, it entails compulsion. This is a familiar issue that has given pause to many investigators, researchers, people of insight, and those possessing spiritual unveiling. Most of them have understood it correctly, but few have expressed it clearly.

We therefore say:

“Causal efficacy” is a term with several meanings. It may mean independently originating something and bringing it into being unaided. If this is the kind of power intended when speaking of the causal efficacy of the servant’s power, then—Allah forbid!—no Sunni has professed it. Rather, it is attributed to the people of misguidance.

If causal efficacy means some kind of assistance, whether concerning one of the act’s qualities or one of its aspects, as many affirmationist theologians have maintained, this too is false, for the same reasons that invalidate such causal efficacy with respect to the act itself. There is no difference between attributing independent causal efficacy to something other than Allah, glorified is He, with respect to a speck or an elephant. Is this anything but a lesser degree of associating partners with Allah, even though the proponent of this view intended only to arrive at the truth?

If, however, causal efficacy means that the act passes from nonexistence into existence through the mediation of the newly created power—in the sense that this created power is a cause and an intermediary through which Allah, glorified and exalted is He, creates the act—just as He creates vegetation through water, rain through clouds, and all effects and created things through intermediaries and causes, then this is true.