nor does He depend on any of the four causes, even while He is characterized by His intrinsic attributes.

If it is conceded that the Essence can entail its effects, then its entailing of attributes is, a fortiori, even more warranted.

One of the gravest contradictions of these thinkers is their claim that, if the Essence entails attributes, this would constitute dependence on something outside itself and would therefore negate its necessary existence—yet they simultaneously say that the Essence entails its effects, which are separate from it, without seeing any conflict with its self-subsistence. If entailment of effects does not undermine necessary existence, then entailment of attributes should, by even stronger reason, be harmless.

Should they maintain, on the contrary, that such entailment negates necessary existence, that would imply that the Essence began to act after not having acted—a conclusion they themselves deem impossible. This is among the clearest rational arguments by which they refuted the mutakallimūn of the Jahmite and Qadarite schools and those who sided with them among the Ashʿarites, Kullābites, and their followers; yet neither side distinguished between one who produces the species in general and one who produces each particular instance.

Moreover, once it is granted that He acts, the act is a real, positive entity and must therefore subsist in Him. To claim that the effect is identical with the action is a manifest affront to reason; and if the action can subsist in Him, the subsistence of attributes in Him is, by even greater right, permissible.

The invalidity of declaring the effect identical with the action:

Those among the mutakallimūn—such as the Ashʿarites and the Hanbalis, Shafiʿis, Malikis, and others who follow them—who equate the effect with the action were driven to this only to escape admitting that temporal events can inhere in the Eternal and to avoid an infinite regress of events. Yet both notions are deemed unobjectionable by these philosophers, while the proofs offered by those theologians for their denial are weak.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims across their various groups hold the opposite view: affirming that the act of creation is other than the created thing itself is the unanimous doctrine of the Salaf. Al-Bukhārī cites this position in his work “The Creation of the Servants’ Deeds.”