Had the term “one” (aḥad) never applied to something that can be physically pointed at, His statement would not in reality have declared Him above resemblance to created things; everything we observe in creation is, after all, something at which one can point. If such objects were excluded from the scope of aḥad, He would not, thereby, have proclaimed His transcendence over likeness to them.

Once these people introduced the notion that the designation aḥad or wāḥid cannot refer to anything pointable, they went on to say: “The Lord has called Himself aḥad and wāḥid, so it must be impossible to point at Him.” Yet the language of the Messenger with which he addressed the people does not accord with this linguistic novelty of theirs.

The same applies to those who declared, “He is a body.” They tampered with the language, turning the word “body” (jism) into a label for whatever can be pointed at, or for every existent being, or for everything that subsists by itself. Then they argued: “He exists, He subsists by Himself, He can be pointed at; therefore He is a body.”

In classical Arabic, however, the word jism is never used in any of those senses. They further claimed: “From the fact that He can be pointed at it does not necessarily follow that He is composed of discrete substances or of matter and form.” Others replied: “On the contrary, every composite thing is called a jism in Arabic, so it follows that He must be called a body if we say that He can be pointed at, is visible to the eyes, or possesses attributes that subsist in Him.”

But what they have asserted about the language is incorrect, for the experts in Arabic do not mean by jism a composite entity. In their usage jism simply denotes a physical body, and they never describe the air as a jism.