then say to him, “How is He in Himself?”

If he replies, “No one knows what He is except Him; the very reality of the Creator is unknowable to human beings,” say to him, “Knowing the ‘how’ of an attribute necessarily entails knowing the ‘how’ of the One described. How, then, could you claim to know the modality of an attribute when you do not know the modality of its Bearer? What we grasp of the Essence and the attributes is only in general terms, in the manner that befits Him. Indeed, even these created pleasures of Paradise are such that Ibn ʿAbbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: ‘Nothing in Paradise resembles anything in this world except the names.’”