 Fârâbî gives a series of arguments for the conclusions (central from a Muslim point of view) that a First can have no partner and no contrary. He does not actually use the word “partner” here, but uses phrases like “nothing other than it can have the existence [wujûd] that it has”. While Fârâbî gives a number of arguments for these conclusions, we can reconstruct perhaps the central arguments as follows. To conclude that, if X is first, no other being Y can have the same existence that X has, Fârâbî says that, if this were so, X and Y would not differ, and so would be the same thing, not two things. But what justifies the claim that X and Y would not differ? Fârâbî says,