—such that a servant might behold Him (1), reach Him, draw near to Him, or physically approach Him (2) in reality. This, and whatever resembles it, (3) is what they mean when they declare that He “admits of no division” (4). They call this the negation of corporeality, for anything to which such qualities could be ascribed would necessarily be a body—divisible and composite (5). As for the Creator (7), they regard Him as utterly exalted above (8) all of these notions.

The second meaning they ascribe to the Name al-Wāḥid is that He has no equal or peer. This expression is closer to Islam, yet they left it vague, folding the denial of all—or at least some—of the divine attributes into their rejection of likeness. In this matter they waver at levels too numerous to catalogue. The Muʿtazilah claim that denying knowledge, power, and other attributes is itself tawḥīd and the negation (9) of tashbīh and tajsīm (10). The Ṣifātīyah reply that such denial is neither tawḥīd nor a true rejection of corporeality or likeness, although they too are inconsistent regarding which attributes they negate. The former, however, insist that the likeness they have repudiated—and the notion they label “corporeality” (11)—constitutes the very tawḥīd without which religion is incomplete; indeed, it is, in their eyes, the foundation of the faith.