the overwhelming majority of Muslims and others. Although the Christians and their counterparts are unable to refute such people, that failure stems from the fact that the methods they employ to declare God free of corporeal qualities are weak and collapse under rational scrutiny, as has been explained elsewhere.

By contrast, if the disagreement is purely verbal, the speaker is blameworthy either linguistically alone or both linguistically and legally: he has either introduced a term the Law does not permit or has used it in a sense that conflicts with its linguistic import. Likewise, the one who rejects such a term may also be censured, both in language and in the Law, when its underlying meaning is sound.

Whoever—among the negators or the affirmers—denies a truth or upholds a falsehood is condemned in substance by both the Law and sound reason.

As for the revealed Law: neither the messengers nor their followers from the communities of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) ever said, “Allah is a body,” or, “He is not a body,” nor did they say, “He is a substance,” or, “He is not a substance.” The linguistic, rational, and legal controversy over these terms is a later innovation that arose within all three religions only after the first generation had passed away.

What the messengers and their followers unanimously affirmed—exactly as stated in the Qur’an and the Torah—is that Allah is characterized by attributes of perfection and that “There is nothing like unto Him” (Qur’an 42:11). His attributes, therefore, are not to be likened to the attributes of created beings, even while affirming every attribute He has affirmed for Himself: nothing extraneous is to be admitted into His attributes, and nothing that truly belongs to them is to be excluded.