Three Types of Beings: Necessary and Impossible

This matters because the discussions that follow are about Allah (swt). He is a being, He is an essence, He is an entity; but His entity, His essence, is very different from the essence of all creation. The creation has a certain type of entity, and Allah has a different type of entity. Then there are those things which are impossible or inconceivable, which cannot be. Those are impossible beings.

So basically, logically speaking, there are three types of beings. Of these three types of beings, one is the necessary being: the being who is necessary, who has to be existent for anything else to come into existence. He cannot not be. He cannot be unexistent; He has to be there. And there is only one entity like that, which is Allah, together with His attributes; those have always been there.

The necessarily existent, by the definition of being necessary, has to always be there. So He cannot have a beginning, because He is beginningless. He cannot have an end, because He is endless, and He is necessary. So Allah is the only necessary being, with His attributes. He is beginningless and He is endless; He is pre-eternal and post-eternal; He has to be existent.

Then there are the impossible beings, what is called mustaḥīl al-wujūd. There is no need to worry about the Arabic terms too much, unless one understands Arabic and wants to write them down; that is up to the reader. So the first is called wājib al-wujūd, which is Allah. Then there is mustaḥīl al-wujūd, which is the impossible being, the inconceivable being. It is not possible for that being to come into existence: for example, an equal to Allah, a peer of Allah, a partner to Allah.