—of their meanings, nor to ponder them or reflect upon them. Consequently, they left the texts exposed to reinterpretation and distortion, just as the imaginalists treated them as mere metaphors with no real substance.

Opposite them stands a fourth group, the advocates of tashbīh and tamthīl (anthropomorphism and likening the Creator to the creation). They understood the passages as conveying only what applies to created beings (1) and assumed that no other reality was intended. They argued, “It is impossible that Allah, exalted be He, would address us with words we cannot grasp, and then say, ‘so that you may understand’ (al-Baqarah 2:72), ‘so that you may reflect’ (al-Baqarah 2:217), ‘that they may ponder His verses’ (Sād 38:29), and similar statements.” These are the mushabbihah (2).

Thus these factions continually denounce one another as innovators, declaring each other misguided and ignorant. They have collided, as you can see, like a band of blind men who meet only to crash into one another—just as one of them, blind in both sight and insight (3), said (4):

My counterpart in knowledge is as blind as I;
In pitch-black night you see us collide.

Allah guided the people of the straight path to the finest way. They remained untainted by any of the filth (5) or impurities (6) of those sects, affirming for Allah the true realities of His names and attributes while denying any resemblance between them and the attributes of created things. Thus (7) their doctrine [q 23 a] stood midway between two extremes