—and they refuted the misconstrued interpretations of the ignorant and the fabrications of the falsifiers who had raised the banners of discord and unleashed the reins of tribulation, speaking about Allah and concerning Allah without knowledge. They rebutted their falsehood, exposed their fraud, laid bare their lies, and defended Allah and His Messenger; their adversaries could find no means of retaliation save by calling them “anthropomorphists, likeners, corporealists, literalists.”
Had those opponents possessed any sound reason, they would have known that such labels do not properly attach to these scholars, but rather to the One who brought forth these very texts, spoke them (1), summoned the ummah to believe in them and to understand them (2), and forbade them to distort or alter them. So abandon this clamorous vilification which you—and every fair-minded rational person—know to be manifest falsehood and blatant slander; there is not a single defender anywhere who will debate on its behalf. Can you acquit yourselves of the charge of taʿṭīl—of negating the realities of the Lord of the worlds’ attributes of perfection, claiming that they are mere figures of speech with no actual substance, and that their outward sense amounts to disbelief, anthropomorphism, and atheism?
If your opponents truly were—as you allege, far be it so—anthropomorphists, likeners, corporealists, they would still be far, far less guilty than you of belittling the Lord of the worlds, His Book, His Names, and His Attributes—even if what they said did entail such belittlement (3), and how much less so when in fact it does not entail it at all! Were they to state their view openly they would say: “We have affirmed for Allah the utmost perfection and the loftiest qualities of majesty, describing Him with every attribute of completeness; so if any corporeality or resemblance (4) necessarily follows from this, that would in no wise constitute a defect, a blemish, or a reproach, for whatever is entailed by truth is itself truth, and whatever follows from affirming the Lord’s perfection is not a deficiency.”
As for you, you have denied Him the attributes of perfection, and there is no doubt that the inevitable consequence of this negation is to describe Him—