Those who uphold the divine attributes answer such objections in two ways: sometimes by outright denial, and at other times by concession.

1. Denial. They say: Pre-eternity is not the Almighty’s most exclusive attribute. What truly distinguishes Him are attributes that belong to none besides Him—such as His being the Lord of all worlds, His absolute power over everything, His sole right to be worshipped, and the like. Even though the attributes are described as pre-eternal just as the Essence is, that hardly makes those attributes a deity or a lord. By the same token, the Prophet, for example, is described as originated, and his attributes are likewise originated, yet this does not turn his attributes into a prophet. Hence, affirming Allah’s pre-eternal attributes is neither assimilation (tamthīl) nor likening (tashbīh).

2. Concession. They add: Suppose we concede that, in the terminology of certain people, this position is called tashbīh or tamthīl; still, neither reason nor revelation rejects it, so there is no barrier to affirming it. The Quran only denies that He has any counterpart, peer, or rival; and in the Arabic tongue in which the Quran was revealed, an attribute is not identical with, nor a peer or rival to, the one it describes. Therefore, it is not included in what the Quran negates. What must be negated is only what the textual and rational proofs themselves negate.

– Another example: The Ashʿarites and those of similar persuasion deny that Allah is above His Throne while admitting life, knowledge, power, and the like. They argue that such attributes may subsist in something that is not a body, whereas being above can exist only in a body. If we affirmed that for Allah, He would have to be a body; bodies are alike, and this would entail tashbīh.

Those who affirm answer them, at times, by rejecting the first premise, namely their claim that “being above cannot …"