al-Qādī Abū Bakr(1), al-Qādī Abū Ya'lā, and other Muslim rational theologians. This is the correct position.

As for their statement, “The cause of its nonexistence is the absence of its cause,” it may be said to them: Do you mean that the absence of its cause necessarily entails its nonexistence and is evidence of it, or do you mean that the absence of its cause is what rendered it nonexistent in external reality?

The first is correct, but it is not what you maintain. The second is false, for its continuing nonexistence needs no cause, any more than the absence of a cause itself needs a cause. It is evident that if it is said, “It is nonexistent because its cause is absent,” the reply will be: “That absence, too, is due to the absence of its cause.” This entails an infinite regress of causes and effects, which plain reason judges impossible; its invalidity is therefore evident. The purpose, however, is to expose some of the contradictions of these philosophizing heretics, who oppose plain reason and sound transmitted revelation.

Likewise, there is his statement:

(“For its being preceded by nonexistence is a state that attaches to it after it has come into existence.”)

It is a necessary concomitant [of it] and has no cause(2).

In reply, it may be said: This is not a positive attribute of it; rather, it is a relational attribute, meaning that it came to be after not having been. Even supposing it were an attribute inseparable from it, the intended point is that it is evidence of its dependence upon an efficient cause. Moreover, you posited this as the cause of its dependence; you did not posit it as an effect of its dependence. Its being independent(3), therefore, does not prevent its being a cause; it only prevents its being an effect.