and sight, and speech—while excluding the other attributes. The deniers of these qualities—such as the Muʿtazilah—objected: “Affirming them amounts to tajsīm (corporealism), for these attributes are contingent accidents, and an accident can exist only in a body.”
Those affirmers replied, “Yet you yourselves have declared that He is living, knowing, and powerful while denying that He is a body, even though you know of no living, knowing, powerful being except a body. You therefore affirmed for Him what lies beyond your empirical experience; in the same way, we affirm these attributes without calling Him a body. This exposes the inconsistency of the Muʿtazilah.”
As for the inconsistency of their opponents who limited affirmation to the preceding seven attributes and rejected the rest, they told those who affirmed pleasure, anger, and the like: “Affirming pleasure, anger, rising over the Throne, descent, face, two hands, and similar attributes is tajsīm, because we know of nothing described by these traits except a body.” The affirmers countered: “You yourselves have described Him as living, knowing, powerful, willing, hearing, seeing, and speaking, and we know of nothing endowed with these characteristics except a body. If affirming what we assert necessarily entails tajsīm, the same charge applies to what you have asserted; and if it does not apply to you in what you affirm, neither does it apply to us—even if you insist otherwise—for there is no real difference between the two cases. Your distinction is self-contradictory.”
Section
The guiding principle in affirming the divine attributes is to affirm for Allah, exalted be He, every attribute of perfection He affirms for Himself, in a manner that admits absolutely no deficiency, as He says: “To Allah belongs the highest description, and He is the All-Mighty, the All-Wise” (Q 16:60). The “highest description” is the most perfect attribute that nothing can resemble.
All of Allah’s attributes are attributes of perfection, whether they are affirmative attributes or attributes expressed through negation. As stated earlier, sheer negation is never found among the divine attributes; rather, the purpose of a negating attribute is to deny the imperfection while at the same time affirming the perfection implied by its opposite.