There is a fact hiding in plain sight in the language of the Quran. The Arabic word for “thing”— shayʾ (شيء)—and the word for “to will”— shāʾa (شاء)—come from the same root: shīn-yāʾ-hamza (ش-ي-أ). In the language of the revelation, a thing is not a neutral lump of existence sitting inertly in the world. A shayʾ is, at the level of its very letters, a willed. The most ordinary word in the language—the word a child uses to point at the world—carries a complete theology inside it.
If the Quran describes itself as revealed in “a clear Arabic tongue” (16:103, 26:195), then this is not a coincidence to be shrugged off. The vocabulary of the Quran is part of its message. And in this case the vocabulary teaches something staggering: there are no things, only willings. Existence is not a warehouse of objects. It is a continuous act of divine volition.
Will Comes First, Things Come Second
The Quran states the relationship between will and thing explicitly in its creation formula:
36:82 Only His command, when He intends a thing, that He says to it, “Be,” and it is.
Notice the order of operations. First comes the intention, then the actualization. What makes something a thing is precisely that God has willed it. The verse compresses an entire ontology into a single line: will, then thing, then being.
This explains two verses about human origins that would otherwise read as strange redundancies:
19:9 He said, “Thus said your Lord: ‘It is easy for Me to do. I created you before that, and you were not a thing. ‘”
Before God’s will turned toward you, you were not merely nonexistent—you were not even a thing. Thinghood itself is conferred by the willing. No will, no thing. The verses are not poetic filler; they are ontologically precise.
A Thing Is Not a Possession—It Is a Continuous Gift
Our default picture of the world is a picture of objects that simply are: solid, self-standing, persisting by their own right. Once a thing exists, we assume, it holds its existence the way a person holds property. The root ش-ي-أ overturns this picture. If a thing is a willed-thing, then it exists only as long as the willing continues. Existence is not owned; it is sustained.
The Quran says exactly this:
39:62 GOD is the Creator of all things, and He is in full control of all things.
Creator and controller—the second word matters as much as the first. God does not create things and then release them into independence. He remains wakīl over every thing, holding each in being:
35:41 GOD is the One who holds the heavens and the earth, lest they vanish. If anyone else is to hold them, they will most certainly vanish. He is Clement, Forgiving.
Cessation is the default; persistence is the ongoing miracle. A shayʾ is willed the way a note is sung—it lasts exactly as long as the breath lasts. This is why the Quran’s most repeated formula about God and things is, when heard through the root, almost a tautology:
2:20 The lightning almost snatches away their eyesight. When it lights for them, they move forward, and when it turns dark, they stand still. If GOD willed, surely He could have taken away their hearing and their eyesight. Indeed, GOD is upon every thing Almighty ( qadir).
Of course He has power over every thing—a thing is nothing but a precipitate of His willing. The formula does not attach God’s power to things from the outside; it names what things already are from the inside.
Nothing Is Like Him: The Creator Is Not a Thing
The root also illuminates one of the Quran’s most important statements about God:
42:11 Initiator of the heavens and the earth. He created for you from among yourselves spouses—and also for the animals. He thus provides you with the means to multiply. There is not a thing that is like Him. He is the Hearer, the Seer.
Read through the root: no willed-thing is like Him—because He is the Willer, not the willed. Every thing in existence is, grammatically speaking, passive: it was spoken into being, and it stands only while it is held. God alone is active: He speaks, He holds, He wills. The entire distinction between Creator and creation turns out to be the distinction between the active and passive forms of a single verb. That is tawḥīd stated as a point of grammar.
And it exposes the exact nature of shirk. To associate a partner with God is to take some shayʾ—an idol, a saint, a nation, an authority, one’s own ego—and treat it as though it were a willer in its own right, self-standing and worthy of reliance. But every candidate for partnership is itself a willed-thing:
28:88 You shall not worship beside GOD any other god. There is no other god beside Him. Everything perishes except His presence (face). To Him belongs all sovereignty, and to Him you will be returned.
Whatever you set beside God is a thing, and every thing is perishing—held in existence, moment by moment, by the very One you set it beside. Shirk is not just an offense; it is an ontological error, a misreading of what things are.
In Shāʾ Allāh: The Most Accurate Sentence a Human Can Say
There is one passage where the Quran deliberately places both branches of the root side by side:
18:23 And never say, “I will do that tomorrow,”
18:24 Lest that God wills. If you forget to do this, you must immediately remember your Lord and say, “May my Lord guide me to do better next time.”
This is usually read as a lesson in humility, and it is. But it is more than etiquette—it is a demand for accuracy. To announce a future thing without reference to the divine will is to use the noun while suppressing the verb that constitutes it. The phrase in shāʾ Allāh, so often reduced to cultural filler or a polite way of saying “probably not,” is in fact the most metaphysically precise sentence a human being can attach to a plan. It restores to the thing its hidden origin: every thing is a thing of a willing.
The Willed Will: Human Freedom Inside Divine Freedom
The root also resolves the ancient tension between human choice and divine sovereignty—without dissolving either side:
81:28 For whoever among you wills to go straight—
81:29 And you do not will except that God wills, Lord of the universe.
Human willing is real—the verse addresses “whoever among you wills,” and the Quran’s entire moral framework presupposes agents who genuinely choose. But notice what your will is: it is itself a shayʾ, a created and willed capacity. Your freedom is real, and it is a gift; it operates inside God’s willing, not alongside it as a rival. These two truths are not in competition because they are not on the same level. The error is to treat the creature’s will as self-grounding—to promote a willed-thing to the rank of the One who says “Be.” The root gives us the exact picture: ours is a willed will.
The Cosmos Answers: Creation Consents to the Will
The Quran does not portray things as merely passive products of the divine will. In one remarkable scene, the will addresses creation—and creation answers:
41:11 Then He turned to the sky, when it was still gas, and said to it, and to the earth, “Come into existence, willingly or unwillingly.” They said, “We come willingly.”
The heaven and the earth—the totality of things—do not simply appear when willed. They consent. The willed world is not a dragged world; it is a willing world, a creation that meets its Creator’s command with “we come willingly.” Every thing in existence, from the galaxy to the atom, holds this posture of glad obedience:
17:44 Glorifying Him are the seven universes, the earth, and everyone in them. There is not a thing that does not glorifies with His praise, but you do not understand their glorification. He is Clement, Forgiver.
Not a shayʾ exists except in glorification—which is exactly what we should expect once we hear the root. A willed-thing that knows what it is has only one honest response to the will that holds it: praise and assent.
The Quran goes one step further: existence itself was not imposed on things—it was offered to them.
20:50 He said, “Our Lord is the One who granted everything its existence, and its guidance.”
The verb here is aʿṭā (أَعْطَىٰ)—to give, to grant, to extend an offer. God did not force any thing into being; He offered every thing its existence, and it was accepted. Even our presence in this world traces back to an acceptance—the same acceptance by which the human being alone took on the responsibility that the heavens, the earth, and the mountains declined (33:72). We are not conscripts in existence; we are volunteers.
This reframes the human situation entirely. The universe already submits—willingly. The only creature that can come “unwillingly” is the one who was given a will of its own. Rocks and stars have no choice to make; we do. Which means human submission is not some arbitrary religious demand imposed on us from outside. It is an invitation to join, freely, the posture that every other thing in existence already holds by nature—to say with the heaven and the earth, but this time by choice: we come willingly.
Every Thing Has a Measure
Because things are willed rather than self-standing, they arrive shaped—deliberate, proportioned, addressed:
54:49 Everything we created is precisely measured.
إِنَّا كُلَّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقْنَٰهُ بِقَدَرٍ
65:3 And will provide for him whence he never expected. Anyone who trusts in GOD, He suffices him. GOD’s commands are done. GOD has decreed for every thing its fate (measure).
A brute object needs no explanation and carries no message. A willed thing is different: it is intended, measured, placed. This is why the Quran can call the contents of the world āyāt—signs. A sign is precisely a thing that points beyond itself to the one who set it there. If the world were furniture, it would say nothing. Because the world is willed, every thing in it is a sentence, and every sentence is addressed to the one who reflects.
Submission: Saying “We Come Willingly”
All of this converges on the word that names the religion itself. Submission is not resignation, and it is not passivity. It is the alignment of the willed will with the will that willed it.
The structure the root revealed is this: we have a genuine will, granted by God’s leave, and we are commanded to use it—to strive, to choose the right, to say with 81:28 “whoever among you wills to go straight.” Submission does not cancel this striving; it is this striving, exercised in full. We plan, we work, we do our utmost, and we attach to every plan the one accurate sentence: in shāʾ Allāh (if God willed).
But then comes the moment that separates the submitter from everyone else: the moment when the outcome arrives. Whatever came to fruition—whatever is—is, by definition, what God willed. It became a shayʾ; therefore it passed through the mashīʾa. And here the true submitter does something the rest of the world finds almost impossible: he trusts that what God ultimately willed was what was best, and he is content with it—without objection.
This is not fatalism, because it comes after the striving, not instead of it. The submitter’s will was fully engaged in the effort; the submitter’s trust is fully engaged in the result. He wanted one thing, worked for it honestly, and another thing came to be—and he says: the One who willed this is the Hearer, the Seer, and He set for every thing a measure. What I wanted was a guess; what He willed is a fact. Between my guess and His fact, I take His fact, gladly.
2:216 Fighting may be imposed on you, even though you dislike it. But you may dislike a thing which is good for you, and you may like a thing which is bad for you. GOD knows while you do not know.
Notice: even this verse is built on the word shayʾ. The thing you hated and the thing you loved were both willed-things, and your evaluations of them were guesses made in the dark. Contentment with what God willed is therefore not sentimentality—it is epistemic honesty. He knows; you do not.
This is what it means to answer as the heaven and the earth answered. They were given the choice—”willingly or unwillingly”—and they chose willingly. So did we: our very existence was granted, not imposed (20:50), and we accepted it along with the responsibility it carries. We are given the same choice again every day, every time reality diverges from our plans. The one who fights the outcome comes unwillingly, dragged by a will he cannot overpower anyway. The submitter comes willingly, and in doing so joins the glorification that every thing in existence is already engaged in.
The word thing, in the language of the Quran, has never stopped confessing where things come from. Before a single verse is interpreted, the vocabulary has already answered the deepest question a human being can ask—why is there something rather than nothing? There is something rather than nothing because something is, literally, a willed. And it has answered the deepest practical question too—how should I stand toward what happens? As every thing stands toward the will that holds it: we come willingly. What God wills, is. And what is, was best.