How Can Allah Just Exist?

Ustadh Salman Younas is asked how it can be that Allah exists necessarily without beginning or end.

Question:

Assalam alaykum wa rahmat Allah wa barakatuh.

I agree that we came into existence and that Allah is the necessary existent to fulfill it. But how can Allah just exist?

Answer:

Wa alaykum assalam wa rahmat Allah wa barakatuh.

God being the “necessary existent” means that God has always existed without beginning and without end.

In Islamic theology, all contingent and created things require a cause that took them from a state of non-existence into a state of existence. Ultimately, this first cause must transcend contingency and be “necessary” in its existence. Otherwise it does not sufficiently explain the reason for why things exist. If the first cause, or God, came into existence itself, it would not be the first cause, or God, because the question would arise: what created it? Unless we affirm a necessary existent that has no beginning, we will be stuck in an infinite regress, which theologians view as an impossibility.

For more on this, I would recommend enrolling in the introductory aqida course taught by Shaykh Hamza Karamali: Introduction to Islamic Theology: Sanusi’s Umm al-Baraheen Explained: Why Islam is True.

Salman

Checked and approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani.