or omnipotent without any hearing, sight, or will inhering in Him.

So it is with most of their demands (1): once their burrowing (2) is done, they reach conclusions that both sound reason and transmitted proof (3) declare impossible. You will see one of them erecting an argumentative edifice; but as soon as he thinks it has risen high, another comes along with pick-axes of anthropomorphism (4) and doubt, demolishes all he had built, and raises in its place another structure. When he imagines that his own construction is now complete, the first builder returns with the same kind of pick-axes and tears it down. And thus they remain, as one of their own poets (5) said:

My peer in knowledge is blind like me—
Behold us, in deepest night, colliding.

These corrupt principles are what drove them to those false interpretations. Seeing that their principles could not be reconciled with the texts of revelation—indeed, between the two raged an open war—they strained their bodies and exhausted their minds seeking a compromise, then claimed that this was benevolence and harmony! It is as though God, exalted be He, sent down these verses about them:

“Have you not seen those who claim to believe in what was sent down to you and what was sent down before you, yet they desire to take their disputes to the idol-tyrant, though they were commanded to reject him? Satan only wishes to lead them far astray. (59) And when it is said to them, ‘Come to what God has sent down and to the Messenger,’ you see the hypocrites turn away from you in aversion. (60) How then, when calamity strikes them because of what their own hands have sent ahead, and thereafter they come to you…”