all of that, as well as its Sovereign, Originator, Creator, and Fashioner.

When we say that a created being has nothing of itself but nonexistence, nonexistence is not something that requires an existing agent. Rather, nonexistence is not a thing at all. Its persistence is conditional upon the agent’s not acting; this does not mean that the agent’s absence necessitates and brings it about in the way that an agent necessitates and brings about an existing effect. The absence of an effect may indeed be attributed to the absence of its cause, but these two cases differ. An existing effect is created and brought into being by an agent, whereas what does not exist is not brought into being by the agent’s absence, for that would lead to infinite regress and circularity. Moreover, there is no greater justification for one absence to necessitate the other than the reverse: neither absence possesses a distinctive reality by virtue of which it could qualify as an agent.

Although it is intelligible that the absence of a productive cause should account for the absence of its effect rather than the reverse, this is because the existence of the productive cause brings about the existence of what it produces. The mind therefore attributes the effect’s absence to the cause’s absence as a relation of necessary implication. For a thing’s nonexistence is due either to the absence of its productive cause or to the presence of an impediment. Once the productive cause is in place, nonexistence can only be conceived as arising from one of these two circumstances or states. A thing whose cause of existence has been established may be obstructed and prevented by an incompatible impediment—which is something existent—while at other times its cause has not been established. Its nonexistence is therefore attributed sometimes to the absence of its productive cause and sometimes to the presence of an impediment incompatible with it.

This is the meaning of the Muslims’ saying:

“Whatever Allah wills comes to pass, and whatever He does not will does not come to pass”; for