a declarative statement, and that the very speech commanding prayer is identical to the very speech commanding fasting, and the very speech reporting something about Allah is identical to the very speech reporting something about Abū Lahab. Thus, they identify the one general, shared universal, which exists only in the mind, with the particular individuals existing outside the mind. They do not distinguish between oneness in kind and oneness as an individual entity.

Likewise, this distinction was not made by the proponents of the unity of existence, who said that existence is one and identified the Creator’s existence with the existence of created beings, nor by those who said: “Distinct realities, such as commands and declarative statements, are a single reality.”

The One affirmed by the deniers of the attributes—or by those who adopt some of their views—must therefore entail some of these notions: identifying particles with attributes; identifying each attribute with every other; identifying the whole, divided into kinds, with the different individual entities existing outside the mind; treating what cannot exist outside the mind and exists only within it as something that exists, and necessarily exists, outside the mind; and treating what necessarily exists outside the mind as something that cannot exist outside it and therefore exists only in the mind.

Their conception of oneness ultimately leads them to affirm two “ones”:

The first is the indivisible atom affirmed by those among the Muʿtazilah who affirm it, and by the speculative theologians who agree with them, although