the creation into being points to power, the allotment of each creature’s distinctive features points to will, and the flawless design of creation points to knowledge. These attributes—power, will, and knowledge—together indicate life, for they can exist only in a living being. A living being, moreover, must be characterized either by speech, hearing, and sight—attributes of perfection—or by their opposites: dumbness, deafness, and blindness, which are impossible for Allah, Exalted is He. Therefore speech, hearing, and sight must necessarily be affirmed for Him.

• Our reply to them has several aspects:

First: Basing this subject on pure reason contradicts the path of the early generations— the Companions, the Successors, and the leading scholars after them. None of them referred to unaided reason here; rather, they referred to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, affirming for Allah whatever names and attributes He affirmed for Himself or were affirmed for Him by His messengers—affirmation without likening Him to the creation, and transcendence without negation. The Imām of Ahl al-Sunnah, Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal, said, “We describe Allah only with what He has described Himself, and we do not transgress the Qur’an and the hadith.”

Second: Making reason the arbiter in this field is itself contrary to reason, because these matters pertain to the unseen, where the intellect has no independent reach. The mind cannot, in detail, ascertain what is necessary, possible, or impossible for Allah; thus to subject the matter to unaided reason is unreasonable.

Third: Entrusting the issue to reason alone inevitably breeds disagreement and contradiction. Each person has a mind he deems worthy of being followed, as is evident among them: you find one of them affirming what another denies, and a single individual may even contradict himself, affirming in one place