Likewise, the People of the Scripture (1) objected to His words, “O sister of Aaron, your father was never an indecent man” (Surah Maryam, 27), arguing that the gulf of time between Aaron and Jesus is vast (2). Yet nothing in the Quran’s outward wording indicates that the Aaron intended here is Aaron son of ʿImran. They were fond of raising captious objections to the Quran—of this caliber and of even slighter weight (3). So how could they have encountered a passage whose surface sense, according to this Jahmi, affirms a Lord whose condition and form are as grotesque as he claims, and still not have proclaimed it from the housetops, denouncing it in every gathering both near and far? Indeed, despite their polytheism and their intense enmity toward Allah and His Messenger, those opponents possessed a clearer understanding (4) than the Jahmiyyah, who ascribed such an ugly description to the apparent sense of the Quran. But dull minds, blind hearts, and bat-like insights (5) find it all too easy to read such notions into the Quran’s outward wording.

The supporters of Allah said: We shall now demonstrate that this hideous portrayal is not (6) the apparent