the truth, you likewise curse him.
You thus resemble the heretical Jahmiyyah, the philosophers, and the Bāṭiniyyah, who strip the Lord of both of the two opposing attributes—or else refuse to affirm either side of the contradiction. They say,
“We do not say He is living, nor that He is not living; we do not say He is knowing, nor that He is not knowing; we do not say He is powerful, nor that He is not powerful.”
Some of them go further and say,
“We do not say He exists, nor that He is nonexistent; we do not say He is a thing, nor do we say He is not a thing.”
Others declare,
“He is neither living nor dead, neither knowing nor ignorant, neither powerful nor powerless.”
Yet others claim,
“We refrain from using either description altogether.”
They are told, “To abolish both opposites is the same as combining them; refusing to affirm one of the two opposites is no different from refusing to negate one of them.
Likewise, whoever describes Him as existing and necessarily existent in Himself, and then attributes to Him qualities that entail His non-existence, has combined two contradictions.
Any statement that entails joining the two opposites—affirming a thing and denying it—or abolishing both affirmation and negation, is false.
In this regard, the Christians are among the most inconsistent of people: they say a thing and also say what contradicts it, and they curse the one who affirms this and the one who affirms that.
Moreover, every faction among you curses the other. The People of the Creed curse the Arians and the other Christian sects, who in turn curse you, and every one of your groups