“I felt my heart split apart.”

The verse lays down an exhaustive division: Were they brought into being without a Creator who fashioned them? Such a notion is impossible to the most elementary reason. Or did they create themselves? That is even more impossible. The only tenable conclusion is that they have a Creator who brought them into existence.

The Almighty, glorified be He, expressed this proof as a rhetorical question of censure to show that the principle it rests upon is innate and self-evident, firmly rooted in every soul. No sound natural disposition can admit the existence of a contingent thing without an agent that produced it, nor can it claim that the thing produced itself.

Elsewhere we have discussed at length what people have said on this matter—origination, contingency, and the reason contingent beings require an efficient cause. We have outlined the main methods adopted throughout the world to prove the existence of the Maker—whether by dialectical theologians, philosophers, the prophets themselves (peace be upon them), or by the majority of Muslim disputants, whether Muʿtazilī, Karrāmī, Kullābī, Ashʿarī, philosopher, or others—in various works such as The Conflict of Reason and Revelation and similar writings.