exist except in a body; at other times by denying the second premise, namely their assertion that “all bodies are alike”; sometimes by rejecting both premises together; and sometimes by requesting further detail, saying: “If by ‘body’ you mean something compounded of flesh and bone—parts that depend on one another or need causes outside themselves—then such a notion is impossible with respect to Allah, the Self-Sufficient, the Praiseworthy, and it in no way follows from affirming the attributes. But if by ‘body’ you merely mean something that subsists in itself and is described with the attributes befitting it, then this is a truth affirmed for Allah, and none of the false consequences you fear follow from it.”

Once it is clear that people differ over the definition of tashbīh, it becomes evident that resting one’s case on its mere negation is worthless, for according to those who deem the affirmation of the attributes to entail tashbīh, such a stance would require negating Allah’s attributes of perfection. Therefore, the correct criterion for what must be negated of Allah is the one laid down at the beginning of this principle.

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When, then, it is established that reliance on the bare negation of tashbīh is invalid, an even worse approach is that taken by some who base what they deny of Allah on the rejection of tajsīm (corporeality), taḥayyuz (spatial confinement), and the like. You will find that, whenever they wish to argue with someone who attributes to Allah deficiencies—such as sorrow, weeping, illness, begetting, and the like—they say to him: “If Allah were characterized by that, He would be a body or confined to a place, and that is impossible.” Such is their proof!

This method is unsound and fails to achieve the intended purpose for several reasons:

First: The terms “jism” (body), “jawhar” (substance), “taḥayyuz” (occupying space), and the like are ambiguous and equivocal; they neither establish truth nor falsify falsehood. Hence they are absent from the Names and descriptions with which Allah has named and described Himself;