However, to restrict the word “mutawāṭiʾah” (univocal) to that narrow sense is a late-born convention—and an erroneous one as well. Most generic concepts admit of degrees, and complete uniformity across every one of their instances—such that no instance excels another—is scarcely found, if it exists at all. Were these names not univocal but merely analogous, then nearly all universal terms would cease to be univocal, a question that is treated in detail elsewhere.

What matters here is this: when Allah—glorified and exalted—ascribes something to Himself with an attribution that is His alone and that excludes any creaturely qualities, and when He has proclaimed, “There is nothing like Him” and “nor is there any equal to Him,” while denying that He has any namesake, then anyone who nonetheless imputes to those attributions a sense peculiar to created beings is at fault only because of his own misunderstanding and feeble reason, not because Allah or His Messenger have left the matter unclear. The rule is the same for every single attribute.

So whoever infers from the phrase “Allah’s knowledge” that it is a contingent accident that arises by necessity or acquisition—as is the case with creatures—has erred of his own accord; nothing in our very saying “Allah’s knowledge” entails such a meaning. And whoever, upon hearing His words, “Rather, both His hands are outstretched” (5:64) and “What prevented you from prostrating to that which I created with My own two hands” (38:75), conceives of bodily limbs and members proper to creatures has likewise gone astray through his own fault.