so they claimed that the parts separate and then rejoin. This is an obstinate denial of the obvious, akin to “al-Nazzām’s leap.” Likewise, those who maintained that an accident does not persist for two successive moments contradicted sensory experience and what rational people know by the self-evident dictates of reason. Everyone knows that the colour of his body a moment ago is this same colour, and likewise the colour of the sky, mountains, wood, paper, and other things. Among the considerations that drove them to this was their supposition that, if both persisted, neither could be brought out of existence. For they were perplexed about how Allah causes things to perish when He wills to do so, just as they were perplexed about His bringing them into existence. Their perplexity concerning annihilation is even more evident.

One says: “He creates annihilation that inheres in no substrate; it is the opposite of those things, and they perish through their opposite.” Another says: “He deprives them of accidents altogether, or of the persistence without which they cannot endure; thus they perish because the condition of their continued existence is lost.”

One cause of this is their supposition—or the supposition of some among them—that things which come into existence need Allah only when they are brought into existence, not while they continue to exist. Yet they affirmed that He has the power to annihilate them, and so they contrived these false doctrines. These people do not argue for the Lord’s everlasting existence on the basis of the world’s dependence upon Him, but rather on the grounds that He is beginningless, and whatever is necessarily beginningless cannot cease to exist. Apart from that, in their view, an enduring thing has no need of the Lord while it continues to exist.