If it were said:

“The word ‘one’ may be used in their language in this sense, whether figuratively, equivocally, or univocally.”

The reply would be:

Granted that those who came after them might use it in this way, we nevertheless know that they themselves did not, because they did not affirm this meaning. Even supposing that it were used in both senses, it would signify what they have in common, not what distinguishes one from the other. It would therefore not signify the point at issue. If we supposed that it were literal in one sense and figurative in the other, its literal meaning would be the familiar one that first comes to people’s minds when the word is used without qualification.

If we supposed that the word were lexically equivocal, the disputed meaning could not be singled out without a contextual indication identifying it. Yet the verbal indications point to the opposite of their position, not to their position itself. The Quran does not affirm any ‘one’ in the sense they claim, let alone describe Allah in those terms.

This ‘one’ that these people affirm is of the same kind as the states affirmed by those others, and as the nonexistent thing affirmed by those who say, “What is nonexistent is a thing.” It is also of the same kind as the universals and abstractions affirmed by the philosophers, such as intellects, matter, and intelligible form. These people affirm as externally real what has no existence in external reality. Those who affirm states, however, are more reasonable; hence some of them belong to those who affirm the divine attributes. They recognized that these states do not exist in external reality, but contradicted themselves by saying, “They neither exist nor are nonexistent.” They thus came to resemble the philosophizing Qarmatian esotericists, who say, “He neither exists nor is nonexistent, and is neither living nor dead.”

Those who say, “What is nonexistent is a thing; it has subsistence but does not exist,” resemble the philosophizers who regarded