and prohibition, and you assert: “In this respect it is like the One described.” Such an analogy is unsound and merely misleads people.

Forty-seventh Consideration: We say that for a single thing to be without parts is either intelligible or it is not. If it is unintelligible, your entire argument collapses; but if it is intelligible, then it must likewise be intelligible that an attribute exist that has no parts, for that which is indivisible can only be characterized by what is itself indivisible (1). As for conceiving of one and the same thing that is, in its very reality, a plurality of distinct essences—merely because it is conceived as one, partless entity—this does not follow.

At most, he can say: command, prohibition, and report are either (2) sections and parts of speech, or they are not (3). If they are not (3) its sections and parts, our doctrine is sound (4). Our aim is precisely to establish that they are not its sections or parts, for the Described has neither composition nor division; accordingly, His attribute (5) is neither composite nor divisible.

Thus it is said to him: You have produced no proof that these are not its parts and sections, and the most you have advanced (6) merely shows that if the Described is indivisible, it is conceivable that His attribute be indivisible as well. You have not shown that this secures your desired conclusion—and in fact it does not—for you have not established that speech is a single entity, and the division of speech is not like the division of the Described, as we shall clarify, Allah willing. Moreover, by the “division” of an attribute one simply means its multiplicity, and this, according to your own principles, is entirely possible.