The Lord Most High has power over all things. Yet there is nothing that does not have an opposite incompatible with it and a necessary concomitant inseparable from it. It is therefore impossible for two opposites to coexist or for something to exist without what necessarily follows from it. Each of the two opposites is within Allah’s power, and Allah is able to create it, provided that the other does not exist. Their coexistence, however, is intrinsically impossible (1). Thus, His power over each of them does not entail that either can exist together with the other.

People may be unaware of either the incompatibility or the necessary connection and therefore fail to know that the conjunction is impossible. Consequently, they suppose that it can exist together with the attainment of what the Lord loves and seeks (2). There is a difference between knowing that something is possible [and not knowing that it is impossible; all they possess is a lack of knowledge that it is impossible, not knowledge that it is possible] (3). Nonexistence has no agent. Their error thus stems from their lack of knowledge—namely, the ignorance that is the root of disbelief (4).

When His wisdom—Glorious is He—requires the creation of something, its necessary concomitants must likewise be created and its opposites excluded. Thus, if someone asks, “Why did He not place (5) the incompatible opposite alongside it?” or “Why did the necessary concomitant exist?” he asks only because he is ignorant of the realities.

This is like someone asking, “Why did He not create Zayd before his father?”

He is told, “It is impossible for him to be his son and yet be created before him; nor can he be created until his father has been created.” People can discern the wisdom in many of the details of the matters they contemplate, just as they discern the wisdom in the saltiness of the eye’s fluid, the sweetness of the mouth’s fluid, and the bitterness of