does no wrong; denying injustice of the wall is not because the wall possesses any perfection, but simply because it is incapable of being described as either unjust or just. Therefore, the negation of injustice brings it neither praise nor perfection.

Fourth: whenever a negation does not imply perfection, it may stem from a defect in the subject or from its inability to possess the attribute in question. Consider the statement about a man who is too weak to avenge himself against one who has wronged him: “He does not repay evil with evil.” The fact that he does not retaliate is not due to the perfection of his forbearance but to his inability to defend himself; hence, such a negation is a deficiency and a rebuke, not a perfection or a commendation.

Have you not seen the poet of al-Ḥamāsa, satirising his tribe, when he said:
“If I had belonged to the clan of Māzin,
The foundlings of Dhuhl son of Shaybān would never have raided my camels.
…
Yet my people, though many in number,
Take no part in evil, however slight.
They reward the wrongdoing of the oppressors with pardon,
And the misdeeds of the wicked with beneficence.”

He intended by these lines to censure them and depict their impotence, not to praise them for perfect clemency, as is clear from his subsequent wish:
“If only I had a people who, when they mounted,
Would launch raids as riders and horse-men!”

• From this it is evident that those who describe Allah the Exalted solely by pure negation have, in reality, affirmed neither a praiseworthy deity nor even an existent one. They say of Allah: He is not inside the universe, nor outside it, neither separated from it nor muḥāyith1 with it, neither above nor below, neither connected nor disconnected, and the like.

For this reason, Maḥmūd ibn Sabuktakīn2 said to someone who asserted such claims about the Creator, exalted is He: