and His words, “So do not set up comparisons for Allah; surely Allah knows and you do not know” (Q. 16:74), and His words, “Do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge; indeed, the hearing, the sight, and the heart—each of those will be called to account” (Q. 17:36).

2. As for rational reflection: discussion of Allah’s Names and Attributes belongs to the domain of pure report; the mind cannot perceive its particulars, so one must confine himself to what has come through revelation.

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To combine negation and affirmation in the field of the divine attributes is the very reality of tawhid in this regard. The verbal noun tawhid, derived from wahhada/yuwahhidu (“to declare one as one”), cannot be truly realised except through both negation and affirmation: limiting oneself to sheer negation is outright nullification, while limiting oneself to sheer affirmation does not preclude others from sharing the attribute.

For example, if you say, “Zayd is not courageous,” you have negated courage for him and stripped him of it. If you say, “Zayd is courageous,” you have affirmed the attribute for him, yet that does not prevent others from also being courageous. But if you say, “No one is courageous except Zayd,” you have both affirmed courage for him and denied it to everyone else, thereby singling him out for that attribute.

Thus no one can be declared unique in anything unless negation and affirmation are combined.

And know that all the positive attributes with which Allah has described Himself are attributes of perfection, and they are for the most part given in detail, because whenever the reports concerning them are many and their nuances diverse,