Pre-existent Without Origin, Eternal Without End

Qadīmun bi-lā ibtidāʾ, dāʾimun bi-lā intihāʾ. He is pre-existent without origin and eternal without end.

Qadīmun bi-lā ibtidāʾ, dāʾimun bi-lā intihāʾ. Somebody could agree to all of this and yet say: this is something that came about later on; Allah was not there before. This statement shuts that door, and proves that Allah is pre-existent without origin. He did not come from something else. He was not sourced from elsewhere. He has always been existent, from the far reaches of eternity.

That is very difficult for us to fathom, because we are so used to cause and effect. Everything we see tells us where it has come from. Take a bottle of water standing on a table: it tells where it is coming from, and immediately the mind goes to Highland Springs. It seems a bit Scottish; there is a bit of tartan on the label. We are so used to this cause and effect. Someone has a nice watch, and the questions come: what company is it? Who is the manufacturer? Then certain judgements are made based on that. We are so used to that.

So when it comes to Allah (swt), Shayṭān very easily tries to mislead somebody. That is why the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself mentioned that Shayṭān will take a person through a chain of questions and answers: Who created you? You are from your father, your parents; they came from this, and so on and so forth, until he gets to Allah. Then he will say: Where did Allah come from? Because we are so used to that kind of statement, it sometimes becomes very difficult for people to fathom this. Al-Ṭaḥāwī is clarifying that He is an entity who is not governed by the rules that we are governed by, because He created those rules. So leave that to Allah (swt).

That is what is clarified here: He is pre-existent without origin and eternal without end. That is the nature of the necessary being: He always has to be there. He cannot have not been there and then come into existence, and He can never disappear or perish.