“for Allah named Himself with that and no one other than Him assigned it to Him. His words, ‘And Allah has always been,’ mean that He has never ceased to be so.”

Thus Ibn ʿAbbās clarified that the Qur’an means that Allah named Himself with these names; no one else bestowed them upon Him. As for His statement,

“And Allah has always been,”

it means: “I have never ceased to be thus.”

It is evident that Ibn ʿAbbās’s explanation is exactly what the verses themselves convey. From this the invalidity of the Jahmiyyah’s doctrine is shown from several angles:

First: If He is Mighty and Wise—and has never ceased to be Mighty (1) and Wise—and wisdom entails His speech and His will, just as (2) mercy entails His will, then it follows that He has never ceased to be speaking and willing. His designation as

“Forgiving”

is even more emphatic, for if He has never ceased to be Forgiving, then, a fortiori, He has never ceased to be speaking. Yet the Jahmiyyah claim that He was neither speaking, nor merciful, nor forgiving, for these qualities, they say, can exist only after He creates entities distinct from Himself; only then, according to them, does He possess them.

Second: Ibn ʿAbbās’s words, “for Allah named Himself with that,” require that He Himself named Himself with these names, not that the created being (3) named Him with them. Whoever asserts that these names are created within a body must concede that that body is the very thing that named Him with them.

Third: His phrase, “and no one else bestowed that upon Him” (4)—and in another wording, “and no one else made Him so” (5)—is made clear (6) by considering that