that entities subsist in nonexistence, independent of Allah in themselves; that the existence of the Real is their existence; and that the Creator depends upon these entities for His existence to become manifest through them, while they depend upon Him to acquire their existence, which is His very existence.

His position combines the assertion that what is nonexistent is nevertheless a thing with the assertion that the Creator’s existence is the existence of the created being. He further says that the existence that is created is the existence that creates, and the existence that creates is the existence that is created, as explained at length elsewhere.

Others distinguish between absoluteness and particularization, as al-Qūnawī and others like him do. They say that the Necessary Being is absolute existence without stipulating absoluteness. Yet existence in this absolute form is found only in minds, not in concrete reality: what is universal in the mind can exist in concrete reality only as something particular. If it is said that the absolute is part of the particular, it follows that the Creator’s existence is part of the created being’s existence. But a part cannot originate and create the whole; thus, the Creator would not exist.

Others say that the Maker is absolute existence subject to the condition of absoluteness, as Ibn Sīnā and his followers maintain. This position is even more unsound, for what is absolute subject to the condition of absoluteness exists only in minds, not in concrete reality. Thus, the position of these men, insofar as it agrees with those among them whose position entails denying the Creator’s existence, is worse than that of those who resemble the proponents of divine indwelling and union.

Still others regard necessary existence and contingent existence) as analogous to matter