and He is Knowing of all things.’ Thus He categorically denies any begetting with respect to Himself, because procreation is impossible from a single being; it can only occur between two, and He—magnified be His glory—has no consort. Moreover, He created every thing, and His act of creating all things contradicts the notion that anything could be begotten from Him. He is aware of every thing, and such comprehensive knowledge requires that His action be governed by will; consciousness, after all, is what distinguishes the volitional agent from the natural, automatic agent. Consequently, while possessing knowledge He cannot be likened to natural entities from which effects issue unwittingly—like heat from the hot or cold from the cold. In no manner, therefore, may a child be ascribed to Him. Exalted is He. The Almighty says:

“And they have set up the jinn as partners with God, although it is He who created them; and they have falsely attributed to Him sons and daughters without knowledge. Glorified and Exalted is He above what they ascribe to Him—the Originator of the heavens and the earth. How could He have a child when He has no consort, and He created all things, and He is, of all things, Knowing.” (Q 6:100–101)

Those who claim that intellects and souls have emanated from Him have likewise fabricated sons and daughters for Him without knowledge. The former pagans never alleged that any of those supposed sons or daughters created everything else; yet these people maintain that one of the offspring—namely the Universal Intellect—produced all that exists besides it, casting the intellect in the role of the male and the soul in the role of the female. They state this openly. The pre-Islamic Arabs, by contrast, acknowledged that He created the heavens and the earth and brought them into existence after they had been nothing; they never said that they were eternal and coexistent with Him. A fuller treatment of this appears elsewhere.

The point here is that they have never observed anything in existence from which an effect proceeds entirely on its own. Hence the axiom “From the One only one proceeds” is invalid both in the universal syllogism and in analogical reasoning. Indeed, were such a claim ever to be established through a universal syllogism, proving it by analogy would be even more fitting.

Furthermore, the hot object that produces heat and the cold object that produces cold do so without knowledge or will, unlike agents that act with awareness and choice, such as the human being, for this