Yet the Jahmiyyah—whether they belong to the Muʿtazilah or to other groups—have opposed these principles in three ways:

1. They claim that Allah is Living, Knowing, and Powerful, while at the same time asserting that no life, knowledge, or power subsists in Him. In this manner they affirm the names and the corresponding judgments but deny the attributes themselves.⦗1⦘

2. They go even further by saying that He is Speaker, yet the speech they acknowledge stands in something other than Him, and the body in which that speech occurs is not itself a speaker. Thus they affirm the name and the judgment without the attribute, and they deny both the name and the judgment of the very locus where the attribute is said to subsist. Nevertheless, they would never call anyone a speaker unless he possessed speech, while in this same context they are willing to call someone knowing or powerful who in fact has no knowledge or power.⦗2⦘

3. Their third position is still more remote from sound reason. Concerning will, they sometimes deny it outright, and at other times maintain that He is Willer by a will that inheres in no subject. Hence they affirm the name and the judgment without the attribute, and they locate the attribute in no subject at all.

All three of these claims are known, by the most immediate intuitions of the intellect⦗3⦘ and by the innate, self-evident knowledge with which Allah has endowed His servants, to be false and hypocritical. Yet they tried to bolster their stance with an argument forced upon them by the Kalābiyyah, the Ashʿariyyah, and those who agreed with them, namely, the case of the operative attributes—such as His being Creator, Provider, Just, Giver of life, and Causer of death. These are called the attribute of takwīn (origination), the attribute of creation, the attribute of action, or the attribute of effect. They therefore said: “He is Creator, Actor, Originator, and Just without any act of creating, originating, acting, effecting,⦗4⦘ or even any justice subsisting in Him.” By the same token, they reasoned, He may be Speaker and Willer. They further asserted that “creation” is identical with the created thing itself, and the Kalābiyyah and Ashʿariyyah followed them in this, so the earlier sects gained thereby a proof against them.⦗5⦘ They coupled the two issues because they said: “If we concede that…"