Section Four: The ultra-extremists among the philosophers, the Jahmiyyah, the Qarmatians, the Bāṭinites, and others.

• Their method: they stripped Allah, exalted is He, of both affirmation and negation. Thus they denied of Him existence and non-existence, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, and the like, asserting instead: “He is neither existent nor non-existent, neither living nor dead, neither knowing nor ignorant,” and so on.

• Their pretext: they imagined that if they described Him with affirmative qualities they would be likening Him to existing beings, while if they described Him with negations they would be likening Him to non-existent things.

• The reply to them consists of several points.

First: Naming Allah and describing Him with the names and attributes by which He has named and described Himself is not assimilation and does not necessitate it. Sharing a name or an attribute does not require that the bearers of that name or attribute be identical. Calling this “likening” is nothing but deception and a ruse to mislead the common folk and the uninformed. Were we to accept such a baseless contention, any false claimant could label the truth with off-putting terms so that people would shun it.

Second: It is known by rational and sensory necessity that every contingent being must have a Maker who is necessarily existent. We know—and directly observe—that originated things have come into being; they cannot appear without an Originator, nor can they bring themselves into existence, as Allah, the Exalted, says: “Or were they created out of nothing, or are they the creators?” (Surah al-Tur 52:35). It follows inexorably that they have a creator who is necessary in His existence—namely, Allah, exalted be He.