For this reason, Ibn Abbās [may Allah be pleased with them both] (1) said:

“Faith in divine decree is what holds the affirmation of Allah’s oneness together. Whoever (2) affirms Allah’s oneness and believes in divine decree has perfected that affirmation; but whoever affirms Allah’s oneness and denies divine decree diminishes it through his denial (3).”

The Qadarite position entails (4) both shirk and the denial of divine creative agency: it denies that some occurrences have any agent while positing an agent independent of Allah.

These are two branches among the branches (5) of disbelief, for every form of disbelief stems from either denial of divine agency or shirk (6). This may be explained as follows: they say that a human being became one who wills and acts through his own will, after not having been so, without any originator bringing this about. He had neither willed the act nor performed it, (7 then he came to will and perform it 7) (7).

This state of affairs (8) came into existence after not existing and yet, according to them, it came into existence without anyone bringing it about. This is the basis of denying divine agency. Anyone who holds that an occurrence can arise without anyone causing it to arise, that the existence of a contingent thing can prevail over its nonexistence without anything to give it preponderance, and that one of two equivalent things can be specified without any specifying cause—with respect to occurrences and contingent things as a class, this would amount to denying