As for your statement, “He is not composite”: if you mean that someone composed Him—glory be to Him—or that He was dispersed and then became combined, or that He can be divided and separated, Allah Most High is exalted above that. But if you mean that He possesses attributes and is distinct from created beings, this meaning is true and may not be rejected merely because you call it “composite.” This and similar explanations may be offered in reply.

If the opponent persists in applying his newly coined technical expressions to the true meanings he denies—for example, claiming that affirming the attributes of created beings deserves, linguistically, to be called ascribing corporeality, composition, or the like—he is told:

“Suppose it is given this name. Your denial of it must rest either on revelation or on reason.”

As for revelation, it does not use these terms concerning Allah, either to deny or to affirm them. Nor did any of the early generations of the Muslim community or its leading scholars speak of Allah Most High in these terms, whether by negation or affirmation.

Rather, statements such as “Allah is a body” or “He is not a body”; “He is a substance” or “He is not a substance”; “He is spatially situated” or “He is not spatially situated”; “He is in a direction” or “He is not in a direction”; and “Accidents and temporal occurrences inhere in Him” or “They do not inhere in Him,” and the like—all these statements are innovations introduced among the practitioners of innovated speculative theology. The early generations and leading scholars did not discuss them by issuing unqualified negations or affirmations. Instead, they censured the speculative theologians who spoke about Allah Most High in this manner, whether by negation or affirmation.

If, however, you mean that the negation of this is known through reason—which is what those who deny the attributes claim, maintaining that their negation, known through reason, conflicts with the texts of the Quran and Sunnah—