they found it possible to envisage the Essence without that attribute, they would pronounce, “This one is an addition”; and when they could not, they would say, “It is not an addition.” All that follows is that the attribute is additional to the notional Essence they themselves have imagined, not that, in external reality, there exists an Essence stripped of that attribute alongside a separate attribute appended to it. In reality there is nothing but the one Essence qualified by those attributes.

Yet one must distinguish between saying, “The attributes are other than the Essence,” and saying, “They are other than Allah,” for the name Allah embraces His very Essence together with His attributes. Thus, when someone says, “I called upon Allah” or “I worshipped Allah,” he has not invoked a bare Essence nor isolated attributes; he has called upon the Essence characterised by its attributes, and His blessed Name applies to that totality. Accordingly, His attributes are not outside the referent of His Name nor something tacked on to it, even though one might speak of their being “additional” to a hypothesised bare Essence. Whoever imagines them to be additional to the Essence that is in fact qualified by its attributes—attributes that fall within the scope of His Name—has erred, for in people’s minds and on their tongues this point is often a source of confusion.

Hence, to say, “The attributes are distinct from the Essence,” does not carry the same problematic implication as saying, “Allah’s attributes are other than Allah,” for the name Allah includes His attributes. If one says, “They are other than Him,” the sense conveyed is that they are separate from Him—and that is false. For this reason, when the deniers debated the leading scholars of the Muslims