and He continues to say, “O Adam, O Noah, O Abraham,” before they ever existed and after they passed away; and He has never ceased—nor will He ever cease—saying, “O company of jinn and humankind,” before they are created and after they have entered Paradise or the Fire.

As for the early generations of Muslims—the Companions, the Followers who excelled after them, and the leading imams of the ummah such as the four founders of the legal schools and others, together with all scholars versed in the Book and the Sunnah—they draw a clear line between what Allah owns and His own attributes. They know that the servants are created, that the attributes of the servants are created, and likewise their bodies, spirits, speech, and voices when they recite the revealed Scriptures and otherwise; their ink and paper, the angels, the prophets, and everything of that sort—all of it is created. They also know that the attributes of Allah that subsist in His very being are not created: His knowledge, power, speech, will, life, hearing, sight, pleasure, anger, love, and hatred. Rather, He is characterized by whatever He has attributed to Himself and by whatever His messengers have attributed to Him—without distortion (taḥrīf) or denial (taʿṭīl), and without enquiring into the modality (takyīf) or likening (tamthīl). Therefore, they neither negate from Him what He has affirmed for Himself or what His messengers have attributed to Him, nor shift the words from their proper meanings, nor interpret Allah’s speech in a way He did not intend, nor liken the Creator’s attributes to those of the creation. Instead, they know that Allah