its speaker knows it to be false or is mistaken, believing it to be true and consistent with reality when it is not. Such is the speech of these deniers of the attributes, for the One they affirm has no reality outside the mind. It is therefore impossible for Allah’s speech to report that it exists outside the mind. This is because they identify distinct realities with one another, allowing no distinction whatsoever. Thus, they identify the self-subsisting essence with the attribute subsisting in it, just as they identify the knower with knowledge itself and the powerful with power itself.

Some of them identify knowledge with the object known. They also identify each attribute with every other, making knowledge identical to power and power identical to will. Or they treat a general, universal kind, divided into individual instances, as one and the same individual entity, so that this instance is identical to that instance. Thus they say: existence is one, and the necessarily existent is absolute existence conditioned on being absolute, with no distinguishing character whatsoever, or conditioned on the absence of every positive feature. It is therefore not distinguished by being necessary, knowing, powerful, living, or possessing any other feature that would distinguish it from another existent.

When they work out the implications of their position, they make no distinction between necessary existence—the Creator, eternal without beginning, the Originator, independent of everything besides Him—and contingent existence, which is brought into being, created, originated, and dependent. The latter can in no way dispense with its Creator, but remains forever dependent upon Him.

They identify speech—which is divided into commands, prohibitions, and declarative statements—with those very commands, prohibitions, and declarative statements. They also hold that the very speech that is a command is identical to the very speech that is