attributes.

You acknowledge that the occurrence of temporally originated things without this eludes and defies rational comprehension.

The same applies to what you reported concerning the Mu‘tazilah: that, according to them, uttered speech is an act, and an act need not subsist in its agent. Yet you acknowledge the distinction between an act and its effect, and that no effect can be conceived without an act. This is an objection you raised against Abū Hāmid in Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, saying that it is impossible for the world to come into existence without an act of bringing it into existence, such that the bringing into existence is the act and what comes into existence is its effect.

You have also refuted the Mu‘tazilah’s principle that whatever temporally originated things subsist in must itself be temporally originated. You were therefore bound to affirm an act subsisting in its agent, whether eternal or temporally originated, and to affirm that speech subsists in the speaker and is an act of his.

How, then, can you maintain this when you and your companions affirm no speech of Allah except what exists in human souls? The Mu‘tazilah are better than you.

If you say, “Unlike the Mu‘tazilah, we affirm that the meaning is eternal,” the reply is: “The Mu‘tazilah too acknowledge that Allah knows all things, and affirm this more fully than you do.”

The Mu‘tazilah do not deny this meaning. Although they contradict themselves in affirming and denying the attributes, their position is undoubtedly closer to affirming the attributes than that of your companions. Whatever you regard as eternal, they too can regard as eternal.

The statement concerning the attributes for which people have most severely censured the Mu‘tazilah is that of their leader Abū al-Hudhayl: Allah knows by a knowledge that is His very essence, though His essence is not knowledge. Yet you say that knowledge is the knower. Indeed, you say that knowledge and the knower